Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

Josephine looked at him and then gathered up her linen skirt. ‘I should go.’

‘One more question,’ Pyke said, before she could get away from him. ‘Why is Charles frightened of you?’

‘Frightened of me?’ She seemed amused by this idea. ‘That boy jump at his own shadow.’

Later, in his bedroom, Pyke put on a fresh linen shirt, found the bottle of rum that Harper had given him, uncorked it and took a long swig. The fiery liquid scalded the sides of his throat. He poured some into his cupped palm and splashed it over his face and neck, to try to ward off the mosquitoes. From his window, which faced westwards over fields of sugar cane towards the conical-shaped mountains in the distance, he watched the bulbous orange sun sink down over the horizon. As the breeze picked up once more, Pyke listened to the great house creak on its foundations and thought about the secrets it held, the things that had taken place within its walls.

Somewhere out there, William Dalling would be preparing himself, too.

Pyke’s linen coat was hanging from a hook on the back of the door and, when he put it on, he found his sheath knife in one of the pockets and the letter he’d taken from Malvern’s bedroom in the other.

Taking the envelope to the lantern next to his bed, he turned it over and inspected the wax seal. It looked genuine enough. Pyke removed the letter and scanned the contents. The writing itself was full of old-fashioned loops and flourishes. It was short, barely even a page, and its author apparently wanted to reassure Malvern that all the arrangements — whatever these were — had been made. It was signed ‘Uncle William’. Pyke looked at the top of the letter where the address had been transcribed: Norfolk Street, London.

But it wasn’t this which caught his attention.

It was the name. Lord William Bedford.

It was almost dark by the time Pyke slipped unnoticed from the house via a back door and crossed the lawn, the counting house silhouetted against the dense jungle of vegetation behind it. The night air was warm and moist and up above, the inky sky was washed with streaks of moonlight. Underfoot, cockroaches and other nocturnal scavengers feasted on the dirt. Moving quickly across the lawn, the blunt edge of his knife pressing against his skin, Pyke could hear the clucking of hens from the nearby chicken coops. Near the counting house, the smell of jasmine and honeysuckle grew stronger, and Pyke thought again about what he was going to do, whether he really could kill a man in cold blood, not because he absolutely had to but because his cover would be blown if he didn’t. He could still taste the fiery sweetness of the rum; he tried to swallow but there was no moisture in his mouth. Passing the counting house, he looked around him, his eyes now adjusted to the darkness. He took a few more steps and whispered, ‘Dalling?’ According to his watch, it was exactly seven o’clock.

Something or someone moved out of the shadows. Pyke felt his body his stiffen, his fingers brushing against the knife in the pocket of his coat. Dalling stepped into the moonlight about ten yards in front of him. Pyke had been expecting him, of course, but the bookkeeper’s sudden appearance startled him none the less. They stood there for a moment, each waiting for the other to speak. It was Dalling who broke the silence.

‘Have you got my money?’ he whispered, glancing up at one of the windows of the counting house.

Pyke jangled the purse in his coat pocket. In fact, there was twelve rather than two hundred pounds in it, and immediately Dalling said, ‘That sounds a little light.’

Pyke took a step towards him but Dalling retreated slightly, holding his hands up in the air. ‘Hold on there, sir.’ He seemed jumpy and again looked up at the window of the counting house.

The sudden powder flash lit up the immediate area and the simultaneous blast shattered the tranquillity. The shot had come from the same window Dalling had been looking at and it tore a hole in his chest and sent him reeling backwards into a nearby bush. Following Dalling’s gaze, Pyke had seen the barrel of a pistol poking out of another window and had luckily managed to throw himself to the ground just as a second blast ripped through the air, a ball-shot fizzing just above his head. He heard voices in the counting house: Pemberton, saying, ‘Did you get him?’ and a voice he didn’t recognise replying, ‘I reckon so. Or I saw ’im go down.’ Not daring to move, Pyke waited until he heard Pemberton and the other one stumbling down the steps from the counting house, then jumped up and ran in the direction of the forest. Dalling lay unmoving in one of the flower beds. Pyke didn’t need to be told he was dead.

Without the moonlight to guide him, it was almost too dark for Pyke to see, and he had to move carefully through the trees, his hands stretched out in front of him. Certainly running was out of the question at first, but after a while the shapes of the forest began to slip into focus and he could move more quickly. Behind him, he could hear voices, and in the distance he could already see the flame of torches; his pursuers wouldn’t have the same difficulties negotiating their path through the darkness.

Pyke didn’t know where he was heading and hadn’t yet formulated a plan, apart from putting as much distance between himself and the men who’d tried to murder him as possible. Nor did he have to worry about making too much noise; they hadn’t followed him immediately, choosing instead to round up help and come after him with torches and in greater numbers. Already the word would be spreading through the great house and the servants’ quarters: Dalling had been shot and killed, and the man who’d done it — Montgomery Squires — was now on the run. The fact that Pyke had indeed been planning to murder Dalling was beside the point. Squires would be blamed and Pemberton would have solved two problems at once: the man who was possibly sleeping with his wife was dead and the man who wanted to buy Ginger Hill was on the run, suspected of Dalling’s murder. Perhaps it was better that they’d missed him. If he had been found shot dead, too, it might have looked too suspicious. Now, in the eyes of the law, running would merely confirm Pyke’s guilt.

To his right, the ground fell away sharply, and Pyke decided to follow it downhill as far as it took him; at one point the slope dipped so sharply he had to descend on his hands and backside, like a crab. After about two hundred yards the ground levelled out and he stood still for a moment and listened. The river was close by — he could hear it above the sound of the leaves rustling in the breeze — and so he set off towards it, scrambling down another rocky escarpment and only just stopping himself from tumbling into the water at the bottom of the slope.

Next to the river, the canopy of trees wasn’t so thick and soft beams of moonlight easily penetrated the foliage, shimmering gently on the surface of the water. But the current was strong and the water deeper than Pyke had expected. When he stepped off the bank, it rose first to his waist and then up his chest, and then he lost his footing in the shale and mud so that, for a short while, the current carried him downriver until he realised it was taking him back in the direction of the house. Pyke tried to swim against the current, swallowing whole mouthfuls as he did so, and a few strokes later he could touch the bottom on the other side, then he hauled himself up on to the bank and lay there panting. Above him, birds stirred in the branches of the mango and guano trees. He took a moment to empty water from his shoes, wring his socks and wrap the arms of his coat around his waist.

On the move again, he scrambled up the side of the bank, crossed the same flint track he’d ridden along the previous day and followed the line of the trees as far as the edge of the first cane field; here, he could cover more ground because the moonlight was sufficient to guide him. He ran at a pace he could maintain and every now and again he would pause, his heart thumping against his ribcage while he listened for any sign of his pursuers.