Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

But Pyke could see the gleam in the fat man’s eye. This was his chance. He didn’t care about the sanctity of the investigation. He would do what he wanted to do, regardless of what Pyke said.

‘Just promise me one thing,’ Pyke added. ‘Before you take this story to Spratt, confirm what the mudlark said with this doctor, Mort.’

Later, after Saggers had left him, Pyke turned back to face the river and thought about Emily; what she would have made of the mudlark’s story and what she would have done to assist women like Lucy Luckins or, for that matter, Bessie Daniels.

It took Pyke just under an hour to walk to Crane’s cottage in Bethnal Green, but the place was deserted; there was no sign of Bessie Daniels, Crane or any of his assistants.

This time, in the upstairs room, Pyke noticed that some chairs had been arranged in a semicircle around the sofa and on the floor he found a couple of cigar butts. It was almost as if someone — perhaps more than one person — had sat there and watched whatever had taken place on the sofa.

On his way to a luncheon appointment with Godfrey, Pyke paid another visit to Crane’s shop just off the Strand. Crane arrived shortly afterwards and swore blind he’d paid Bessie and she had left of her own accord. Later, as he approached the public house on Bow Street where he’d arranged to meet his uncle, Pyke was still pondering whether Crane had told him the truth.

‘The older lad who was hanging around outside my apartment the other day,’ Godfrey said, once they’d finished eating. He was mopping up the rest of his steak and kidney pudding with a hunk of bread. ‘I saw him chatting to Felix again yesterday. I don’t like him, I don’t like him one bit.’

They were sitting next to the window at the front of the Brown Bear, just across the road from the Bow Street magistrate’s office.

‘I told Felix he wasn’t to have anything to do with the lad.’

Godfrey finished chewing. ‘Whatever you said doesn’t appear to have sunk in.’ He paused to take a sip of claret. ‘You see, if you were there, with him, all the time, you could discipline him as a father is meant to.’

Pyke waited for his uncle to look up at him. ‘You never disciplined me.’

‘Exactly my point. And look how you’ve turned out.’ Godfrey chuckled to himself but quickly his face turned serious. ‘This mulatto girl, whoever she was, is dead. Can’t you see that? Your son is alive and he needs you, Pyke.’

‘I know he needs me but what am I supposed to do? I think about Mary Edgar’s corpse, what they did to her, and it makes me want to scream.’

‘How terribly morbid, dear boy. Sometimes I wonder where the dashing, cavalier chap I wrote about has gone, I really do.’

‘The figure in your book?’

‘Friend to the people, enemy of the well-to-do.’

‘I was never that.’

‘Riling the great and the good.’

‘I’m just trying to do a job.’

‘Leave it to the police. It’s what they’re paid for.’

‘I’ve been rotting in a prison cell for the last nine months. I want to do something that will make Felix proud of me. Something I can be proud of.’ Pyke paused, aware that he was raising his voice. ‘And anyway, the person in the book isn’t me.’

The real reason Pyke and Godfrey had met for lunch lay just across the street from the Brown Bear. The Swiss valet accused of Lord Bedford’s murder — Jerome Morel-Roux — was being held in the cells under the Bow Street magistrate’s office and he had written to Godfrey begging for an audience with Pyke.

Crossing the street, Godfrey commented, ‘Do you know what Morel-Roux’s admiration for Confessions has done for sales? You can’t find a copy of it anywhere in the capital or, I’m told, the provinces.’

As the gaoler, whom Godfrey had paid a king’s ransom to smuggle them into the cells, led them down a steep flight of stone steps Godfrey whispered to Pyke, ‘If he confesses to the murder, remember to get him to sign something.’

For ten years, until he’d retired from the Runners following his marriage to Emily, the gloomy rooms of the Bow Street magistrate’s office had been a home from home to Pyke. Now, more than ten years later, he was back, and the smells of the building, mildew and floor polish, were just the same. For a moment he was transported back to an earlier moment in his life.

The gaoler unlocked the door to Morel-Roux’s cell, slid back the iron bolt, and pushed open the door. He told Pyke he had ten minutes. Pyke stepped into the tiny cell and waited for the door to swing closed behind him. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness.

Morel-Roux was sitting on the stone floor, his back against the far wall. He was twenty or twenty-five, Pyke guessed, and in other contexts he might have been considered handsome. His face was gaunt and angular, with a strong jaw, prominent nose and piercing green eyes that followed Pyke around the cell.

‘It seems you’ve caused quite a stir. I’ve heard stories about masters going to bed with their lanterns still burning.’

‘I presume you’re Pyke.’ For some reason, the valet sounded disappointed.

‘I’m not what you expected?’

Morel-Roux shrugged. ‘I just thought you’d be younger, that’s all.’ He spoke in a soft, almost effeminate voice, without a trace of a foreign accent. ‘I wanted you to know I didn’t kill my master.’

‘I’m flattered, of course, but you should really talk to the police.’

That produced an angry frown. ‘Do you think the police care about my guilt or innocence? A crime’s been committed and I’m their sacrificial lamb. I’m poor and I was born in Switzerland. No one will weep when I hang.’

Pyke looked around the small, cold cell. The valet had made a fair point. ‘But there has been an investigation. Evidence has been gathered. And without proper evidence, the prosecutor will never be able to convince a jury of your guilt.’

‘I’ve read your book,’ Morel-Roux said. ‘Your faith in the fairness of the legal process surprises me.’ For the first time, Pyke thought the valet sounded his age: stamping his foot about the unfairness of the world.

‘For a start, it’s not my book. And secondly, whether the evidence against you has been fabricated or not, you can’t be convicted without due process.’

‘Then we should start with the evidence.’

‘I’m listening,’ Pyke said.

‘Some of my master’s possessions, including an antique gold ring and two banknotes, were found behind the skirting boards in my room.’

‘You’re suggesting you had no idea they were there?’

Morel-Roux gave Pyke an icy stare. ‘If I’d stolen them, would I have hidden them in my own quarters?’

Pyke had posed the same question to Tilling and had received no satisfactory response. This time, however, he shrugged. ‘People are stupid, careless or complacent.’

‘I’m not,’ the valet said.

‘Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you were stealing from Bedford and he caught you red handed…’

‘In the middle of the night?’

‘You were there in his room, to steal from him, and he woke up and saw you.’

‘If I’d startled the old man, if he’d caught me in the act, he would have cried out. Think about it. And do you think I’d have been able to stab him without disturbing any of the other servants?’

‘I don’t know the house. But if you’d surprised him and stabbed him before he’d had a chance to shout for help, it might have been possible.’

‘Well, I didn’t and that’s that.’

‘Not a defence that will get you far in court, I’m afraid,’ Pyke said. ‘And when it comes to the trial, they will paint you as an angry, spiteful man who hated his master, whether that’s true or not.’