Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

‘Like I said, I don’t pry into my guests’ affairs.’

Pyke told him they’d need to find Arthur Sobers as soon as possible and that he would have to search the room and put some questions to Thrale’s lodgers about Mary Edgar. He arranged to drop by the Bluefield later that afternoon and made Thrale promise not to disturb the room — and, if he saw Sobers, not to tell him what had happened.

‘He seemed like a fine chap,’ Thrale said, ‘but I guess, with blackbirds, you just never know.’

Pyke asked Thrale whether he’d stay until the artist arrived, so that between them they could come up with a sketch of the dead woman.

‘I saw you fight Benbow, must have been fifteen years ago,’ he said, while they waited.

‘Hardest fight of my life.’

Pyke nodded. ‘At the time I thought you should have stayed down.’

‘And now?’

‘You did what you had to.’

Thrale looked at him with new respect. ‘I’d stayed down, I might as well have ended me life then and there.’

After the artist had sketched what Thrale reckoned to be a reasonable likeness of the dead woman, Pyke took a hackney carriage back to his uncle’s apartment in Camden Town. On the way he asked the driver to stop at a slop-shop in Battle Bridge where he purchased a presentable frock-coat, and on Camden Place he paid a barber to trim his hair and whiskers. He got all the way to the pavement outside the apartment before realising that he didn’t have anything for Felix. Not knowing what kind of gift was appropriate for a ten-year-old boy, Pyke dithered on the bottom step and was spotted through the front window by his uncle. A few moments later, the door swung open, and Godfrey hobbled down the steps to greet him.

‘Dear boy, is it really you?’ He took Pyke’s arms in his hands and squeezed them, as he had always done when trying to show affection. His cheeks might have been a little redder than Pyke remembered, and his hair a little whiter, but aside from that, he was the same as ever. ‘We weren’t expecting you for another month or two.’

At the top of the steps, Pyke was greeted by Copper, a giant mastiff and former fighting dog that Pyke had unintentionally acquired a few years earlier when he’d shot one of its legs off with a pistol. Oddly enough, the animal hadn’t held this against him. Recognising him instantly, the three-legged beast hopped excitedly towards him, tail wagging. Pyke patted Copper on his black muzzle, accepting the licks to his hand, then looked up to see Felix holding the banister. He had come halfway down the inside stairs but didn’t seem to be ready to join them in the hallway. ‘Felix, my lad, come down here at once and greet your father,’ Godfrey called out.

Felix didn’t move.

Jo appeared from the back of the apartment; she was wearing a kitchen apron and her hair was tied up under a lace bonnet. ‘ Pyke.’ She hurried forward and they greeted one another awkwardly, a handshake and a kiss rolled into one. Although she was technically his servant, they had nonetheless become close in the years since Emily’s death. In that time, Pyke had also become aware that Felix had started to regard Jo as a surrogate mother, and he’d tried not to place too great a burden on her, but her kindness and good nature meant she had always been willing to help in whatever way she could.

‘You look well,’ Jo said. ‘You really do.’

‘And so do you.’ He meant it, too, but his gaze drifted up the stairs to where Felix was still standing.

Jo noticed this and said to Felix, ‘Come down here at once, young man.’

But Felix still refused to budge. Pyke took a few tentative steps towards him. ‘Felix?’ He waited for his son to look at him but the lad’s eyes were planted on his shoes. ‘Do you not recognise your own father?’ He tried to keep his tone light and breezy, not wanting any of them to see his bitter disappointment at Felix’s apparent indifference. In his head, he’d imagined the lad bounding down the stairs and throwing his arms around him.

‘Hello, Father,’ Felix mumbled. Then, without warning, he turned and disappeared up the stairs.

Jo called out, ordering Felix to come back down ‘this minute’, a maternal firmness in her tone, but when nothing happened, she said she would go and drag him down if necessary. Pyke stepped forward and blocked her path. ‘It’s my fault. I should have given you time to prepare, time for Felix to adjust. Leave him for the moment. He’ll come round.’

‘I just can’t understand it,’ Godfrey said, shaking his head. ‘The boy talks about you constantly. Doesn’t he, my dear?’

Jo smiled but her awkward reaction suggested she didn’t entirely concur with Godfrey’s assessment. Pyke thought about the way she had spoken to Felix, and the way Felix had taken her hand on the street earlier that day.

‘You’ll stay with us, though? I’m afraid you won’t have your own bedroom but if you don’t mind sharing the front room with Copper…’

‘Thank you, but the sooner I find my own accommodation, the better it’ll be for all of us.’ Pyke had intended to stay the night but the coolness of Felix’s reaction had wounded him and now all he wanted to do was be by himself.

‘At least stay for a glass of claret.’

Pyke glanced up the stairs and then bent down to give Copper another pat on the head.

‘Just give him a little time, dear boy. Deep down, the lad adores you.’

Jo excused herself and returned to the kitchen. Godfrey led Pyke into the front room and said, ‘Perhaps you haven’t heard about the success of our book…’

‘It’s not our book,’ Pyke said, glancing around the room, taking in its familiar sights and smells. ‘It’s your book.’

‘Quite.’ Godfrey smiled awkwardly. ‘So tell me why they let you out so soon.’ He went to pour them both a glass of claret from the decanter.

‘Well,’ Pyke said, taking a sip of the wine, ‘an old friend wants me to investigate the murder of this woman…’

He wanted Godfrey to know what he was doing because he hoped his uncle would tell Felix; most of all he wanted Felix to know that he was more than just an ex-convict.

That night, Pyke found accommodation — little more than a garret really — in Smithfield and, with nothing to unpack, he lay down on the old mattress and listened to the rain beating against the tiles. At his side Copper, who had insisted on coming with him, snored contentedly. As he tried to sleep, he thought about the ward at Marshalsea and the fact that, to all intents and purposes, he had swapped one cell for another.

Early the following morning, Pyke went to see the old man who ran the dram-shop — the one who’d found the body. He told Pyke essentially the same story he’d told Tilling: that he had first seen the corpse while discarding the previous night’s soil into the stream that ran through the land at the back of his shop; that it hadn’t been there the day before or else he would certainly have noticed it; and that he hadn’t interfered with the corpse in any way but had sent a lad to fetch the police.

He struck Pyke as a credible witness, or as credible as someone who sold illegal spirits with the potential to blind customers could be. But it was his wife, a stout, unattractive woman with thick, wiry hair sprouting from her nose, that Pyke really wanted to talk to. She also stuck to her story and, in the end, Pyke decided that she, too, had told the truth. On the night in question, she had been woken by hushed voices coming from beneath her bedroom window; her husband, she’d told Pyke, had been drunk and hadn’t stirred. She hadn’t gone to the window because she suffered from gout and hadn’t wanted to move from her bed, but she’d certainly heard a wagon or cart stop near the bridge. She reckoned it had stayed there for about ten minutes.