Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

He noted down the address on The Strand that Harriet Alefounder had mentioned and waited. ‘That woman — Mary Edgar — was murdered. Her corpse was found last week on the Ratcliff Highway.’

Stiffening her back Harriet Alefounder looked at him, dry eyed, and sniffed. ‘Do you expect me to say I’m sorry?’

‘She was strangled and then her eyes were gouged out.’ It would be in the newspapers soon enough and Pyke wanted to force some kind of reaction from her, but she barely even blinked.

‘You can’t expect that William could be involved in such a business?’

‘I don’t know what to think.’ He stared into her proud face and wondered what she’d had to sacrifice to attain such a level of hardness.

‘You mentioned two women had been killed,’ she said, as if they were chatting about recipes for jam.

Quickly he told her about Lucy Luckins and her possible connection to the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

‘That was how he claimed he first met the Malvern woman.’ Harriet Alefounder’s voice quivered slightly as she said the name.

Pyke considered this new piece of information. ‘If I wanted to talk to her, do you know where I might find her?’

‘Her father owns a big mansion in Belgravia — he made his money from sugar in the West Indies. As I remember it, she owned a much smaller house near Hyde Park.’ She shut her eyes. ‘Curzon Street, I think. I remember following my husband there, too.’

Later, as Pyke prepared to leave, she followed him to the front door and stood there for a moment, contemplating the willow tree through the window. ‘You must think me a heartless, disloyal creature but in my own way I still care for him deeply. And to answer your question, I don’t believe he’s capable of hurting anyone, certainly not in the manner you suggested.’

Pyke had his hand on the brass door handle when she added, ‘But you know what hurt me the most, when I saw the two of them walking arm in arm along The Strand? I was a long way away and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be but I swear there was a little of her, of the Malvern woman, in this mulatto girl.’ And when he looked up, her lips were trembling and her eyes had filled with tears.

The following afternoon, Pyke found Felix and the older boy on the pavement outside Godfrey’s apartment.

The older lad was teaching Felix a game using three coins. He had a malnourished face, with red rims around his eyes and yellow skin from a poor diet. When he saw Pyke, he adjusted his billycock hat, pulled up his knee-breeches and put the coins into the pocket of his monkey coat. He didn’t seem surprised to see Pyke and even managed to hold his gaze for a while.

‘Go back into the apartment and leave us for a while,’ Pyke said to Felix.

‘Eric was just teaching me a trick…’

‘Go inside now and wait for me there,’ Pyke said, looking at the lad, Eric, rather than at Felix.

‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ Felix said, his voice quivering with defiance.

Pyke turned to him and immediately Felix scuttled across the pavement and up into the apartment. ‘I want you to leave my son alone,’ he said, refocusing his attention on Eric.

‘I can come and go as I please, cully,’ the boy said with a sneer. ‘You don’t own the street.’

‘I see you outside my uncle’s apartment again, I’ll come and find you, and when I do, you won’t even be able to hobble home.’

But Eric didn’t appear to be cowed. ‘Your boy’s a bit green, ain’t he? Wouldn’t last a week on the street.’

Pyke took a step towards him. ‘Anything happens to my son, God help me, I’ll rip your head from your neck with my bare hands.’

‘Why should I listen to a pathetic old jailbird like you? Felix told me ’bout you. Put inside for not paying your debts.’ He stood his ground but his face had turned white and his hands were trembling.

‘Did my son tell you that?’ Pyke could feel the anger gathering inside him.

Eric saw he’d unsettled Pyke and grinned. ‘That and a whole lot more about what a rotten father you are.’

For a moment it felt as if he’d swallowed a handful of nails. Pyke didn’t look up at the window of the apartment but he could sense he was being watched.

‘I’m going to count to five and if you’re not gone by the time I finish, I won’t be held accountable for my actions.’

But Eric folded his arms and remained where he was. ‘Who knows? In time, and with the right guidance, maybe Felix would make a good dipper.’

Pyke grabbed him by his throat and lifted him up off his feet. Choking, Eric tried to wriggle free from his grasp but Pyke held firm. He heard someone rapping on the window and looked up to see Godfrey and Jo. Then one of the neighbours appeared from their apartment and ordered Pyke to let the boy go. Pyke opened his hand and Eric fell to the pavement, holding his neck as though it were broken.

‘Given I’m used to eating horse or very possibly mule, this is a most welcome change indeed, sir,’ Saggers said, his mouth half open so Pyke could see the chunks of meat churning around inside. In front of him was the remains of a beefsteak that a few minutes ago had been as big as the plate itself. They were sitting at a table in the corner of the Cafe de l’Europe on Haymarket, well away from the rest of the early evening diners, as if to underline the fact that they didn’t belong in a place where the starched linen tablecloths were a brilliant white and the cutlery alone was worth more than Saggers earned in a month. ‘It’s not Halnaker’s venison but it’s a most acceptable cut of meat,’ he said, picking up the steak with his hands and gnawing the last bits of meat from the bone.

Pyke poured him another glass of claret. Saggers had already told him that Spratt, the editor, had refused to publish the story about the second body without corroboration from the surgeon, Mort, but that as yet he hadn’t been able to track the man down.

‘I tried to get George Luckins to go on the record about his daughter and even offered him a few groats for his effort but the man turned me down flat, said he didn’t want to profit from his daughter’s murder.’ Fat dripped down his chin. ‘Can you believe some people?’

Pyke didn’t know whether to laugh or despair. ‘So tell me what you’ve managed to find out about the West India Dock Company.’ This was the real reason Pyke had agreed to take Saggers to dinner.

‘Ah, yes.’ The fat man swallowed half the claret in a single gulp, his giant Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. ‘Most interesting.’

‘In what sense?’

‘The company is struggling but I suppose that’s no secret. Sugar revenues have been falling for some time now and with the end of apprenticeship and increased competition from French and Spanish colonies investors are beginning to look elsewhere. India, for example. I’m told the East India Company is flourishing.’

‘Go on.’

Saggers sat back and let out an enormous belch that filled the room and stopped the other diners in their tracks. ‘One of the reasons they’re so keen to distance themselves from our horrible little murder is they’re just about to try to raise fresh capital, and any whiff of scandal might deter potential investors.’

‘Why do they want to raise capital?’

‘The short answer is that they’re considering joining forces with the East India Dock Company to build a new, much larger dock farther down the Thames towards Tilbury.’

Pyke considered what he’d been told. ‘Did you get me a list of major shareholders?’

With a theatrical flourish Saggers produced a crumpled piece of paper from the pocket of his tweed coat and shoved it across the table. ‘The single largest shareholder is a man called Silas Malvern.’