Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

Saggers had told Pyke Luckins’ story, and throughout it the coal-whipper just sat there, mute and unmoving, his eyes not blinking and his lips cracked and blistered.

‘If I’d known who she was, I wouldn’t have gone and sold her to the doctor.’ Gilbert Meeson’s skeletal face was criss-crossed with thick, purple veins and covered by warts the size of shilling coins. ‘But by the time I fished her out of the water, to be honest, there weren’t a whole lot left of her.’

Luckins stared down at the ground, as though the subject of their conversation was too painful for him.

‘But you’re certain she’d been strangled?’ Pyke asked.

‘I’ll tell yer what I told Mr Saggers ’ere.’ Meeson glanced over at the penny-a-liner and nodded. ‘I saw the marks around her neck. There was no question about it, and when the doctor seen it, he said the same.’

‘But we want to know about the eyes,’ Saggers said, breathless with excitement. ‘Tell him about the eyes.’

Meeson sniffed and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jacket. ‘There weren’t none.’ He said it so matter-of-factly that it took Pyke a moment to comprehend what he’d just been told. Luckins, meanwhile, started to hum, a low tuneless noise that Pyke couldn’t help but feel was the last defence of a man who’d already succumbed to his fate.

‘What do you mean, there weren’t any?’

‘Like I said.’ Meeson glanced over at Luckins, who was still humming. ‘The doctor took one look at her body and told me they’d been cut out with a scalpel.’

‘But he was still prepared to pay for it?’ Pyke’s palms were moist. A gust of wind rattled the frame of the window and they all looked at it, startled.

‘Not much, seeing as how bloated it was, from all the time it spent in the water. But he weren’t so worried about the eyes. You see, he told me he was in the business of cutting off folk’s limbs.’

‘What was the doctor’s name?’

Meeson looked at Pyke and blinked. ‘He wouldn’t want me telling yer that.’

Outside, Pyke could hear the squawk of hungry gulls. ‘You’ll tell me his name because it’s the least you can do for this man sitting next to you. You made a profit from his daughter’s murder.’

The mudlark stared down at his muddy boots. ‘Since yer put it that way, his name was Mort.’

Pyke’s throat felt scratchy but he knew drinking more beer wouldn’t do it any good. He made a mental note of the doctor’s name. ‘Mr Luckins?’

The coal-whipper stopped humming and looked up at him, his eyes hard and clear. ‘Sir?’

‘You told this man here that someone helped your daughter find work as a seamstress.’ For some reason, Pyke raised his voice, as though Luckins were either a simpleton or partially deaf.

‘I did, sir.’

‘Can you remember the name of the man who helped her?’

‘His name?’

Pyke nodded his head and waited.

‘I saw ’im once, just briefly. But I never found out his name.’

‘Is there anything at all you can tell me about him, or about your daughter, that might help me find the man who killed her?’ Pyke could feel the sweat trickling down the small of his back.

‘I ’member her telling me he worked for a society what had the word vice in the title. I can’t think of the whole thing.’ He shut his eyes and put his hand up to his forehead.

Pyke looked up at him, dry mouthed. ‘Do you mean the Society for the Suppression of Vice?’

‘That were it.’ Luckins hesitated. ‘Why? Is that any help to you?’

‘Would you recognise this man if you saw him again?’

The coal-whipper’s eyes glazed over. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. Yer see, I didn’t see him for long.’ His expression was both apologetic and suggestive of a pain Pyke remembered only too well and hoped he would never have to face again.

As they prepared to leave, Pyke took the mudlark to one side and asked him whether he knew or had heard of a blind man who sometimes scavenged on the river.

‘The one they call Filthy?’ Meeson said, his face screwed up.

‘That’s him. Do you know him or where I can find him?’

‘I just heard of him, sir. I ain’t never seen him, let alone talked to him.’

‘You don’t have any idea where I might look for him?’

Meeson stared down at his boots. ‘He don’t work this part of the river, that’s all I know.’

Outside, they watched the mudlark trudge disconsolately back towards his place in the sludge. The sun was hot and a group of bare-footed children was playing near by in puddles of mud. Pyke brought his hands up to his eyes to protect them from the glare of the sun off the water. Saggers stood at the edge of his vision, shuffling from one foot to the other.

‘If it’s true, if the mudlark is right, it must be the same man.’ Pyke waited, not sure whether he was excited or disappointed by this notion.

Saggers nodded vigorously. ‘Same cause of death, same facial mutilation, same part of London.’

‘The only difference this time is that the victim, Lucy Luckins, was white.’

‘Who cares? I’ll not go hungry for a whole year on the money I’ll make from this one.’ Saggers looked at him. ‘You still owe me a venison supper at the Cafe de l’Europe. Don’t think I’ve forgotten, sir.’

‘You can think of your stomach at a time like this?’

Saggers tried to appear hurt. ‘Imagine it, sir, as my stomach thinking about me. Do you suppose I like being subject to the whims of this monster?’ But he patted his stomach gently, as though proud of it.

‘So the man we’re looking for is indiscriminate about who he kills, black, white, it doesn’t matter to him,’ Pyke said, trying to keep his mind focused.

‘You sound disappointed.’

‘I’m not disappointed. I just can’t reconcile it with some of the other evidence.’

‘Such as?’

Pyke paused, aware he hadn’t told the penny-a-liner about the bottle of rum and what he’d found out about Mary Edgar’s flirtation with Obeah.

‘Far be it from me to suggest you’re being parsimonious with the truth, sir, but I do get the sense you’re keeping certain morsels of information from me.’ Saggers wiped spittle from his chin. ‘As an example, perhaps you’d like to explain why you were so interested in the Vice Society?’

‘I had an idea that the women might have dabbled in prostitution, that’s all.’

‘And do you think they did?’

Pyke shrugged. He didn’t want to tell Saggers about his suspicions regarding William Alefounder just yet. Maybe it was coincidental that he sat on the board of the same society whose agent had tried to help Lucy Luckins. Maybe this person really had tried to help her and was wholly innocent in the matter of her disappearance and murder. But Pyke had always been distrustful of coincidences, believing instead that there was usually, or nearly always, a rational explanation for instances that seemed, from the outside, to have been conjured solely by fate.

‘I’m going to take this story to Spratt and he’ll publish it on the front page of the Examiner.’

Pyke kept his gaze aimed at Saggers, though he had to squint. ‘Including the part about the eyes?’

‘I can tell you don’t want me to.’

‘You’ll bring a whole lot more pain into the life of George Luckins and anyone who’s close to him.’

‘But not writing the story isn’t going to bring his daughter back, is it?’

Pyke acknowledged this with a single nod of his head.

‘So you have another objection?’

‘If you sensationalise an investigation like this you’ll lose control of it. Suddenly everyone will want to be involved. Overnight you’ll have a hundred journalists fighting you for the story. Pretty soon, rewards will be offered. That will attract the scavengers and fortune-seekers who will, in turn, fabricate stories either for the money or just to be part of the thing. Before you can stop it, there’s too many people involved, too much information out there, and the truth will slip by unnoticed.’