Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

Taking care to follow the narrow, uneven paths that had been cut along the side of the cane fields, he must have covered two or three miles before he stopped for a break. Allowing himself five minutes, Pyke used the time to tend to his feet, bursting a blood blister on the sole of his left foot with the tip of his knife and wringing the sweat from his socks. Then he set off again, this time taking a path that cut between two cane fields, heading towards the mountains and, he guessed, away from the coast. In the distance the same ragged, conical hills he’d seen from his bedroom window rose up from the earth, silhouetted against the inky blue of the night sky and the vast panoply of stars. He kept moving towards the hills but even an hour later, running at a steady pace, they didn’t seem any closer. Pausing again, he thought for the first time about the wisdom of his actions and whether his decision to put as much distance as possible between himself and the great house had been a wise one. Around him, the air was balmy. In a few hours, the sun would rise and then he would be more visible; also by then word of the murder would have spread far and wide, so Pyke would have to stay hidden until the following night or until he could find a way of contacting Harper.

Moving northwards through what seemed to be endless fields of cane, Pyke slowed to a walk; his feet hurt too much to continue running and his whole body was exhausted. He could see a giant cotton tree somewhere in the distance and told himself he would keep walking until he reached it, but after what seemed like an hour, it didn’t appear to be any closer. He was trudging now, rather than walking, and when he reached the edge of one cane field he found a small grassy verge. He sat down, took off his shoes and lay down in the tall grass. Pyke was asleep almost before his head touched the ground.

The sun seemed to grow in the clear, cloudless sky and by mid-morning there wasn’t a drop of moisture in Pyke’s mouth. Indeed, those parts of his body unprotected by his clothes — his face, neck and hands — were sunburnt and blistered. He had covered more ground than he realized, and it took him only another hour or so to cross the final part of the mountain plain. Then he was back into dense jungle vegetation and climbing again. He found a stream and fell to his knees, lapping up the pure, mountain water until he thought his stomach might burst. Following the stream uphill for about half a mile, Pyke came across a pool in the shade of a giant logwood tree. There, he removed his clothes and jumped into the clear water, luxuriating in the sensation of suddenly being cool, and for a while he lay on his back in the water, staring up at the vine-covered branches above him. For that moment at least, Pyke wasn’t thinking about his own predicament. Rather his thoughts had turned to the letter he’d found in Charles Malvern’s bedroom.

Lord William Bedford was Charles Malvern’s godfather. More than that: Bedford had, at Charles Malvern’s behest, taken Mary Edgar into his home, so she would’ve been the mistress that Morel-Roux had referred to. Now, though, Bedford and Mary Edgar were both dead, and Morel-Roux was facing trial and likely imprisonment — or even death — for the aristocrat’s murder. This was what Pyke knew. It also made him realise that the valet had probably been telling the truth, and that Mary Edgar and Lord Bedford had, very possibly, been killed by the same person or people; their bodies left in different parts of the city to conceal the connection. For what reason could someone like Morel-Roux have had for wanting both Lord Bedford and Mary Edgar dead?

Momentarily Pyke thought about Morel-Roux rotting away in his prison cell, but then he heard a noise, the snap of a twig, and his mind was wrenched back to his present circumstances. He looked up and there was a tall, lanky, black boy staring down at him, grinning.

‘I’ll pay one of you a silver dollar if you’ll take a message to a man called John Harper at the Falmouth Post newspaper.’

‘What message?’ A skinny man with two front teeth missing looked at the other seven or eight figures gathered around Pyke, their expressions curious rather than hostile.

The village itself was a revelation: neat, single-storey houses made of brick and timber, with garden plots at the front and rear, had been constructed along two well-maintained tracks, and at the crossroads a church was being built. The men wore trousers and shirts, not rags, and the women dresses made of linen and muslin.

‘That I’m here; that I want to speak to him in person; that I want him to come to your village.’

‘Take half a day for a man to walk to Falmouth and another half a day for him to walk back,’ another man said.

‘Two silver dollars.’ Pyke held open his palm and allowed them all to see the coins.

‘I’ll do it,’ the boy who’d first seen him in the bathing pool said.

‘You’ll do it, boy, but the dollars go towards the building of our church,’ another man said, pointing at the timber skeleton of the new edifice.

A couple of the men argued for a while in a dialect Pyke couldn’t understand but finally one of them turned to him and said, ‘Dis is a free village, and we all the Lord’s chirren now, so we don’t want no trouble here.’

‘Nor do I.’

The man stared at Pyke for a few moments, his eyes narrowing. ‘Man told me dis mornin a white man been killed up at the big house. You know ’bout that?’

Ignoring him, Pyke produced another coin from his pocket. ‘I’ll pay a dollar to anyone who will take me into their home, let me rest there and cook me a meal.’

The same man who’d scolded him shook his head, as though disappointed. ‘Did the Good Samaritan ask for money to help the man beaten by robbers?’

After a meal of boiled yams and sweet potato, which he ate on his own inside the stone and timber house, Pyke tended to his blistered feet, rubbing soothing aloe which he’d been given by his host into the cuts and blisters. Afterwards, he lay on a straw mat and stared up at the thatched roof, thinking about what had happened, how Dalling seemed to have known what was going to happen. In the end, Pyke could come up with only one explanation. Dalling had gone to Pemberton and told him what he knew or suspected: that Pyke wasn’t who he claimed to be. Pemberton had then made the necessary arrangements. He had probably told Dalling that Pyke would be killed, hence the bookkeeper’s nervous glances towards the counting-house window. Doubtless Pemberton had failed to inform the bookkeeper of his own imminent death. That way, Pyke could be blamed for his murder and be killed in the process. Later, they could tell the magistrate that Pyke had been shot while trying to escape from the scene of the crime. If the magistrate wanted to know why Pyke had killed Dalling, Pemberton could say that Pyke was, in fact, an impostor and had killed the bookkeeper to protect his cover. Pyke didn’t know whether Dalling had been sleeping with Pemberton’s wife and, if so, whether Pemberton had found out about the affair, but assuming both things were true, it gave Pemberton a good reason for wanting to assassinate Dalling as well.

Pemberton clearly had his eyes set on keeping the estate. It didn’t matter that Pyke actually wasn’t Squires. Indeed, if Squires ever made it to the island, and heard about how his good name had been besmirched, he would put himself on the first ship back to Antigua.

‘You go to England to be with your fiancee,’ Pemberton would say to Malvern, ‘and I’ll stay here and manage the estate.’

That would give him everything he wanted.

Pyke guessed that Pemberton had been trying to run the estate into the ground to deter potential buyers. And when they weren’t deterred, as in this particular instance, he had taken a more direct approach.