Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

‘And what did he say?’

‘He told me he’d had a long talk with her and that she’d agreed to return to Jamaica. I suspected at the time he’d paid her off. But he said I wasn’t to contact her — I was to let her go and not make a fuss.’

Pyke waited for a moment and listened to the wind roaring outside. ‘So he knew about you and her?’

Alefounder shrugged. ‘He never actually said so, but I suspect he knew.’

A short silence passed between them. ‘Tell me what you did when you first heard that Mary was dead; that she’d been murdered.’

‘Silas came to see me again. He told me there’d been a terrible tragedy. He explained that he’d put Mary up in a guest house on the Ratcliff Highway while she waited for her ship. He said he didn’t know exactly what had happened; all he knew was that she’d been strangled and that her body had been found somewhere near by. He told me he blamed himself. He was very upset.’

Pyke made a mental note of exactly what Alefounder had said. ‘And what did you think?’

‘What do you mean, what did I think?’ A slight element of frustration had crept into Alefounder’s tone.

‘For a start, did you believe him?’

‘Why shouldn’t I have believed him?’

‘Two murders in a week, both victims living under the same roof. That didn’t strike you as coincidental?’

‘By then I knew the police had arrested the valet for Bedford’s murder. I didn’t see the two as being connected.’

‘What you mean is that Silas Malvern ordered you to keep your mouth shut.’

‘He made me see that doing nothing was in my best interest. His, too. He didn’t want to read about his family in the newspapers or have to answer some policeman’s questions.’

Pyke considered what Alefounder had just told him. It made a certain amount of sense. Preserving one’s good name was just about the most important thing a man like Malvern could do.

‘So when I turned up in your office and made those accusations, you went directly to see Silas Malvern.’

Alefounder nodded. ‘He told me I’d have to make a statement to the police but that he could arrange it so that the questions would be of a friendly nature. Above all, he said, I wasn’t to admit ever having known or seen Mary.’ He hesitated, thinking about what he’d just said. ‘I was grateful to him, I suppose. For obvious reasons, I didn’t want to become embroiled in the murder investigation.’

Pyke looked around the room and rubbed his eyes; he was tired from the long walk but he knew he had to remain alert. ‘Did Malvern tell you that Elizabeth had sailed for the Caribbean?’

‘Actually, she didn’t make the journey in the end,’ Alefounder said, staring down at his boots.

That stopped Pyke in his tracks. ‘How do you know?’

‘I received a letter from her saying that she’d intended to make the trip because she wanted to be the one who broke the news to Charles, but that she’d fallen ill at the last moment. For some reason, she didn’t want her father to know that she hadn’t made the journey, but she begged me to break the bad news to Charles.’

‘You know Elizabeth Malvern, then?’

‘She and I were acquainted at one time.’ Alefounder brushed his hand against his chin, as he did when he was lying.

‘ Acquainted? Is that what they’re calling it these days?’ When Alefounder didn’t seem to have understood Pyke’s remark, he added, ‘Your wife told me that Elizabeth Malvern was your mistress for about two years.’

That almost finished him. ‘You’ve talked to my wife?’ The sense of betrayal in his voice was hard to miss.

‘She was very forthcoming about the affair.’

Alefounder shook his head as though he couldn’t quite fathom what was happening to him.

‘Your wife also told me about your charitable work for the Vice Society. Elizabeth’s, too.’ Pyke hesitated. ‘Of course, given this, it seems a little obtuse that Elizabeth should be involved with a man like Jemmy Crane.’

This time the sugar trader’s expression was more circumspect. ‘What she does with her life is up to her.’

‘I take it you don’t approve of her choice of lover?’

‘When we were still together, she expressed an interest in the work the society performs and I encouraged her to join.’

‘And what precisely do you do for the society?’

‘I sit on the board and help raise money for the society’s work. As for Elizabeth, you’d have to ask her. We haven’t had much contact in the past two years.’

‘But you must hear of what she does?’

The trader sighed, clearly agitated, and shook his head. ‘Field work, as far as I’m aware. She latched on to a man called Samuel Ticknor, I believe. I’m told he encourages fallen women to find more respectable occupations.’

‘Does the name Lucy Luckins mean anything to you?’

‘Luckins?’ He appeared to give it some thought. ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘Her corpse was found in the Thames.’

‘I hope you’re not suggesting that I had something to do with it,’ Alefounder said, rediscovering some of the pomposity he’d displayed in London.

Pyke shrugged. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, that you and Elizabeth should play any kind of role in the Vice Society when your own sexual predilections are so…’

This was almost too much for Alefounder to bear. His neck swelled with colour and his fists clenched into tight, white balls. ‘I’ll not be slandered in such a vile manner. I might have done wrong by not coming forward with information about Mary…’

But Pyke was not interested in Alefounder’s outrage, whether it was heartfelt or not. He left the trader slumped in a chair and went to find Charles Malvern.

After an hour or so of fruitless searching, Pyke found the young planter wandering on the front lawn. He was muttering to himself, staring up into the dark void, seemingly oblivious to the torrential rain and fierce winds. Pyke tried to put his arm around him and guide him back into the house but Malvern pushed him away and continued to mutter to himself. He stumbled and fell, laughing drunkenly as he did so. Just at the last moment Pyke turned around and saw the plank of wood a fraction of a second before it cracked him around the head, so that in the end he wasn’t sure whether someone had swung it at him or whether he’d become another victim of the storm. He fell to the ground and passed into unconsciousness.

Pyke came around just after dawn the following morning, face down in a drainage ditch, his head throbbing with pain. The air around him was cool and clear and filled with birdsong. The clouds had passed too, and the sky was a mass of intense blue, dazzling to the naked eye. There was a soft breeze, laced with the scent of lily, ginger, jasmine and honeysuckle, and all across the lawn, and on the track leading down the hill towards the stables, pools of water created by the rains shimmered in the early morning light.

On another day it might have been the perfect morning, but the devastation wrought by the storm was apparent wherever you looked. The great house lay in ruins; part of the roof had been torn off and dumped across the surrounding land and the wall at one end of the building had buckled and collapsed. Much of the furniture lay scattered across the lawn, splintered and upended; bookcases were overturned like shipwrecks, their contents distributed to every corner of the gardens; tables and chairs were marooned in flower beds, torn pictures lying face down in pools of rainwater. The surrounding bush had been flattened and pulped by the wind and trees lay strewn across pathways, their roots having pulled up massive clumps of red earth. It was a strange, desolate scene, made even more eerie by the near-total silence. Nothing moved and no one answered Pyke’s calls. He looked for Malvern, Alefounder, Pemberton, Josephine and any of the house servants, but the whole place was deserted.