Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

Almost in unison the congregation broke into an avalanche of applause. Pyke surveyed the faces in the crowd for any sign of Kitty or his son, and as Jakes brought his sermon to a climax, he thought about what the man had achieved: yoking the righteous fury of the poor to a message about the relevance of the Christian faith. It was an almost impossible task, and yet somehow Jakes had made it work.

At the end of the service, Pyke pushed his way through the congregation, eager to say a few words to Jakes and shake his hand. It took the curate a few minutes to field the handshakes and slaps on his back, and by the time he finally joined Pyke, the church was almost empty.

‘Where is my son?’ Pyke asked.

‘He’s out with Kitty.’ Jakes seemed puzzled by his concern. ‘I assure you he’s quite well, Detective Inspector.’

Pyke showed Jakes the name scribbled in the front of the prayer book Felix had given him. ‘That’s the same hand that penned a note sent to me in December. Why didn’t you tell me that Kitty’s real name is Kate Gibb and that she’s Morris Keate’s half-sister?’

‘She isn’t.’ Jakes smiled kindly. ‘Morris’s half-sister, Kate, died from the pox two years ago.’

Thrown by this revelation, Pyke took a moment to recover his stride. ‘Then whose writing is this?’

Jakes looked searchingly at him. ‘Mine.’

Helpers were clearing things away from the pews. Jakes led Pyke to an alcove, where their privacy was assured.

‘I suspect that you and I are quite alike in one respect, Detective Inspector,’ he said, sitting down. ‘We both find it hard to countenance the hypocrisy of those we purport to answer to.’

Pyke rubbed his forehead while he considered what Jakes had just said. ‘When did you find out that money had been embezzled from the Churches Fund?’

‘In the summer, just before Johnny was killed in the pawnbroker’s shop.’

‘You knew the Gibb brothers?’

Jakes nodded briskly. ‘They came to see me some time last year; told me they knew for a fact that Morris hadn’t murdered those boys.’

‘How did they know?’

‘Because they’d found a woman who’d spent the whole night with Morris on the date he was supposed to have killed the second boy. She said he hadn’t left her side for a moment. She also said she’d given this information to a policeman and that he hadn’t wanted to know — that he threatened to lock her up if she persisted with such claims.’

‘Did she have a name?’

Jakes shook his head. ‘I suppose I’d never really believed that Morris could have done what he’d been accused of. After the Gibb boys left, I felt a deep sense of shame. I promised myself I’d do all I could to see that those responsible for inflicting such misery on Morris, and those two boys, would suffer. I won’t pretend my thoughts were especially holy.’

‘You told me before that you knew the Gibb family, and Keate, from your time as the vicar at St Luke’s.’

Jakes nodded. ‘And I saw what it did to the family, thinking that Morris had done the things he was accused of. I saw how it tore them apart. And I did nothing. In effect, I colluded with the wrong that had been done to them. I hid behind my robes. In my naivety, I assumed that the police could, and would, never make a mistake on what was a life-and-death issue.’

For the first time, Pyke could hear the sting of anger behind his words. ‘You told me before about Guppy’s interest in Morris Keate.’

Jakes gave him a wary nod. ‘But it was the archdeacon who came to talk to me about Morris. I assumed at the time his interest was purely a doctrinal one; whether it was appropriate that a man christened into the Anglican Church should’ve undergone an exorcism performed by a Catholic priest.’ He gestured to one of the helpers, who was waiting to be dismissed. Turning back to Pyke, he said, ‘Shortly after Keate was executed, I received word from the archdeacon that I was to be moved from St Luke’s to become perpetual curate of St Matthew’s. I didn’t want to move, but then again, I could hardly refuse to go. Later, of course, I realised I’d been moved here so that Guppy could keep an eye on me.’

‘You didn’t suspect an ulterior motive?’

Jakes shook his head. ‘At the time, I assumed I’d fallen out of favour with the Church authorities. Believe it or not, I’ve never been their favourite son. Not that my sermons were always as unconventional as the one you heard today. I won’t deny that the last year or so has radicalised me in ways I can barely explain to myself.’

It was hard not to see the truth in what Jakes had just said. ‘And what did you think when you heard that Guppy had been murdered?’

‘I learnt about what had happened from Francis Hiley. He turned up on my doorstep that same night. He’d seen a man attack Guppy with a hammer and he’d been too afraid to do anything about it. But then, when he’d gone to see whether Guppy was alive or dead, a policeman had spotted him and shouted at him to stay where he was. He told me he’d run because he knew they’d try to blame him.’

Pyke regarded him sceptically. ‘You didn’t know at the time that Luke Gibb had been the one who’d carried out the attack?’

‘Not immediately, but when Hiley described the man he’d seen, I did wonder.’

‘But that didn’t stop you from giving Francis Hiley shelter and then lying to me about not knowing his whereabouts.’

‘I sent him away to a friend in the West Country.’ Jakes looked at Pyke and shrugged. ‘I knew he was innocent and, after our little conversation, I also knew that some of your colleagues would try to hold him responsible. I couldn’t let that happen again.’

Pyke felt he would have done the same thing in Jakes’s position. ‘So what did you do then?’

‘I went to find Luke.’

‘And were you successful?’

‘Eventually. I put some things to him and he didn’t refute them.’

‘You accused him of Guppy’s murder?’

Jakes loosened his collar and wiped his forehead. ‘He didn’t deny it but by way of explanation he showed me the accounts for the London Churches Fund. He explained that he and Johnny had stolen the ledger from the archdeacon’s safe earlier that year.

‘He said it had taken them two or three years of digging to get anywhere close to Wynter and that, in the end, someone from the archdeacon’s office had tipped them off. Anonymously, of course. Even to a layman, it was abundantly clear that enormous sums of money had been misappropriated from the Fund.’

‘What kind of sums?’

‘Hundreds of thousands, Detective Inspector.’

‘You’re saying the Fund was that rich?’

‘I’m saying, Detective Inspector, that the fund-raising campaign had been extraordinarily successful.’

Pyke thought about what he had been told by the elderly man on Cheapside. ‘I suppose I’d already worked that out.’

Jakes looked at him, his brow furrowed. ‘So you know what they did?’

‘I think so. The money went directly into the Fund’s coffers but the properties were annexed by a subsidiary company: City Holdings Consolidated. They were then sold to Palmer, Jones amp; Co., at significantly less than their market value, and were in turn sold on to the City Corporation for their full market value. The difference was pocketed by the directors of City Holdings Consolidated, who, I’m told, included Palmer, Hogarth and Guppy.’ He decided not to mention Wells’s name, at least not yet.

Jakes seemed impressed by this assessment. ‘Luke also told me that Morris had been sacrificed in order to draw attention away from a potential scandal involving Guppy that had threatened to expose the whole operation.’

Pyke stared up at the ceiling and then at the cross hanging above the table at the end of the nave. ‘So why didn’t you just come to us then and tell us what you’d found out?’