Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

‘I’m sorry but I have to go…’ Alefounder tried to stand up but Pyke pushed him back into his chair.

‘This has to be some kind of mistake,’ Malvern said, bemused, looking at Pyke as if he were still Monty Squires and the world a benevolent place. ‘Who are you, sir?’

‘I was charged with the task of finding her killer.’ Pyke looked at Alefounder, but the trader made no comment.

‘You mean all this time…’

‘I’m afraid there’s more bad news,’ Pyke said, interrupting. He didn’t have time for the man’s histrionics. ‘Your godfather, Lord William Bedford, was also murdered, in an apparently separate incident. I didn’t know that Mary had stayed with him until you told me about it a few days ago. Now I’m certain the two deaths are related.’

‘Uncle William?’ Malvern tried to stand up but stumbled, his hands clutching the sides of his davenport. ‘Did you know about this, Alefounder?’

The trader’s eyelids twitched and beads of sweat broke out around his temples. ‘I was going to tell you…’

‘So it’s true?’ Malvern stared at him, a feral grunt escaping from his mouth. ‘She’s really dead? My Mary’s dead? And Uncle William?’ He sat there staring at nothing, tapping his closed fist on the davenport. His world had collapsed in the space of a few seconds; and it was hard not to feel sympathy for him. But Pyke had travelled more than three thousand miles for this moment and he wasn’t about to let the opportunity slip from his grasp.

‘Tell me something, Alefounder: when did you first fuck Mary Edgar? Was it last year when you visited Ginger Hill?’

Alefounder opened his mouth — just — but actually speaking seemed to be beyond him. Malvern stared at him, trying to make sense of the question Pyke had just put to him.

‘You met her ship when it docked in London but she wasn’t interested in you any more. You begged her to get into your carriage, and eventually she succumbed, but it wasn’t the same. She wasn’t the same. She told you she didn’t want to see you. She spurned you. In the end, you couldn’t take it any more so you strangled her and then dumped her body on the Ratcliff Highway.’

‘ No.’ The shout came out of Alefounder’s mouth like an anguished sob.

‘But the two of you were lovers. You were besotted with her, weren’t you?’

Malvern stared at the trader, still trying to come to terms with what was unfolding. His fiancee had gone from merely being dead to being a harlot, but Pyke guessed that Malvern knew this already: it was why he’d sent her away in the first place. ‘Did you bed her here, in my house?’ Malvern’s face was suddenly streaked with tears.

Alefounder looked at him and mouthed, ‘I’m sorry.’

Without warning Malvern stood up — at first, Pyke thought, to attack Alefounder — and then charged from the room.

‘You’re not going to go after him?’ Alefounder said, a moment later. He looked like a punctured balloon. Pyke wanted to hate him, as he had hated him in London, for his bombast and pride and the way he’d exploited his wealth and position to avoid public censure for his affair with Mary Edgar, but now he seemed like a different person — scared, alone, beaten — and Pyke felt a sudden stab of pity for him.

‘And tell him what? That everyone will live happily ever after?’

‘What if he decides to slit his own throat or put a pistol to his head and pull the trigger? Do you want his blood on your hands as well?’

‘I’m just playing the hand I was dealt.’ But Pyke looked out of the door Malvern had just run through. ‘If you leave this room, if you even move from this chair, I’ll find you, I’ll drag you back in here and I’ll nail your hands and feet to the floor. Is that understood?’

Eventually he found Malvern downstairs in the kitchen. He was sobbing in Josephine’s arms. The pots and pans were rattling in the wind and the sash windows were shaking in their frames. Josephine shot him a look of disgust. ‘Can’t you leave him alone to grieve?’

Back in Malvern’s study, Alefounder had moved from his chair but only to fill his glass with brandy. Pyke took the bottle from him and finished it. After all the rum he’d drunk, it tasted smooth and yet a little bitter. ‘I’m going to ask you some questions,’ he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. ‘This time, I want you to tell me the truth.’

Alefounder just nodded.

‘Good.’ Pyke hesitated. ‘Did you kill Mary Edgar?’

‘No. I didn’t. I swear…’

Pyke had to fight back the sour taste of disappointment. He believed Alefounder; that was the problem. In a stroke, he’d lost his chief and, indeed, only suspect. ‘So tell me who did.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you were sleeping with her.’

This time Alefounder shook his head. There were tears in his eyes. ‘We slept together once here at Ginger Hill. You’re right. I was besotted with her. When I heard she was coming to London, I suppose I jumped to the wrong conclusion.’

‘You thought she’d come to be with you?’

‘I knew Charles had paid for her passage, and still expected to marry her, but…’ Alefounder paused. ‘I hoped I might change her mind.’

‘And did you try?’

‘After I met her off the ship, I suppose it was clear that she hadn’t travelled across the Atlantic to rekindle our affair. I tried to insist that she stay with me, or in an apartment on The Strand I’d rented. She refused and we argued. In the end, I agreed to take her to Bedford’s house in Mayfair, but only on the condition that she meet me the next day for lunch. She refused but a few days later I got a note from her asking whether I’d still be interested in giving her a tour of the city.’

Pyke searched Alefounder’s face for indications he might be lying but couldn’t see any. ‘What happened next?’

‘I picked her up in my carriage at the time we’d agreed and we spent the day together. I’d say she was a little lonely. I showed her the apartment I’d rented on The Strand. I hoped… well, you can probably guess what I hoped.’

‘And it didn’t happen?’

‘Not on that occasion. The next day I picked her up again but this time it was clear that she’d only used me to escape from Bedford’s prying eye. She made me take her to the Tower of London and then she climbed out of the carriage and I never saw her again.’

Pyke considered what he’d just been told. ‘But when you read about Bedford’s murder, you must have feared the worst, surely? Why didn’t you go to the police and tell them about Mary?’

The trader looked up at him and wetted his lips. It seemed as if he was considering his options for the first time. Pyke told him to think carefully before he responded.

‘Because I had a visit,’ he said eventually.

‘From?’

‘Silas Malvern. Charles’s father.’

Pyke nodded. He’d expected as much. ‘Do you know him well?’

‘I don’t know how well acquainted you are with my company but if I told you that Silas Malvern owns enough of it to make my life very difficult, would that help you to comprehend my position?’

‘He told you if you didn’t do exactly as he said, he’d bankrupt you.’

Alefounder shook his head. ‘Nothing that explicit, I’m afraid to say. In fact he’s greatly changed these days. Apart from being physically frail — he uses a wheelchair and his eyesight is fading — he’s something of a religious convert. But he’ll still fight tooth and claw to safeguard his family’s good name. He told me that Bedford had been murdered, probably by his valet, and it would over-complicate matters if the police found out the old man had given room and board to Charles’s fiancee.’ Alefounder hesitated and added, ‘Of course, I asked him how Mary was, whether she was safe…’