Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

Pyke eventually found Malvern and Pemberton under a pile of brick rubble at the end of the house that had collapsed. He checked their pulses but didn’t need to. Both were dead and had been for a while. Pemberton’s face was still bruised from where Pyke had struck him with the shovel, but there was nothing to indicate how he’d died. Charles Malvern, on the other hand, had died from a heavy blow to his skull. In both cases there were drag marks in the brick dust. Pyke rummaged through Malvern’s pockets and found a purse full of silver dollars, which he kept for himself. Someone had wanted it to look like an accident; nothing had been stolen and nothing would be. He retrieved Pemberton’s pistol and went looking for Alefounder.

The house itself would have to be knocked down and rebuilt from scratch. Entire walls had collapsed, many of the ceilings had fallen in and large sections of the roof were gone; as Pyke wandered from room to room, he kept his sleeve up to his mouth to shield it from the choking residue of plaster and brick dust. He didn’t find Alefounder anywhere on the ground floor and the upper floor had been marooned by the partial collapse of the main staircase. Outside, Pyke continued his search of the grounds, including the counting house and, underneath it, the old slave dungeon, but the sugar trader was nowhere to be found.

Back up at the great house, he found Josephine hunched over Charles Malvern’s body. When she finally looked at him, her eyes were watery and bloodshot and her face was streaked with tears.

‘I knew ’im when he was a babe; I held ’im in my arms and sung to ’im.’ She reached out and brushed some brick dust off his forehead.

‘This wasn’t an accident, was it?’

She wouldn’t answer him and looked away.

‘They told you they’d spare him, didn’t they? No one’s going to mourn for Pemberton, are they? Not even his wife, I suspect. But in a strange kind of way, Charles was an innocent.’

Josephine sat there staring down at Malvern’s face for a while, and when she did finally look up, her expression was as hard as dried wax. ‘If you want answers, ask her. Go to Accompong and ask her.’ She spat out this last word with particular venom.

‘Who?’ Pyke tapped her shoulder.

‘If you touch me again, you’ll regret it.’

Pyke’s throat tightened and his jaw clenched. ‘Who do I ask for when I get to this place Accompong?’

‘You threaten me?’ This seemed to amuse her. ‘You think I scared of you ’cos you big and white?’

Pyke looked down at her hunched, frail figure and sighed. ‘I just want a name and then I’ll leave you in peace.’

But Josephine had started to sing a haunting melody whose words Pyke couldn’t quite grasp and whose meaning lay beyond him.

He waited until she had finished. ‘Who put the eyeball in my bed?’ She gave him a proud, defiant stare. ‘I don’t know. I’d say one of the servants paid by Busha.’

‘Why?’

‘To scare you.’

‘Why would he want to scare me, if he’d already decided to kill me?’

Josephine just shrugged. ‘Maybe they don’t know that. It’s how Busha frighten off all them other buyers.’

Pyke waited for a moment. ‘Who should I ask for in Accompong?’

Josephine closed her eyes and shook her head. When she opened her eyes again they were hard and black like pebbles. ‘Ask for Bertha. She Mary’s mother.’

Isaac Webb was waiting for Pyke at the bottom of the hill, a few hundred yards up the track from the old boiling house, where they had parted ways the previous evening.

The devastation was not as bad down there; the stable roof was still intact and Pyke could hear the snorting of horses.

‘Malvern’s dead. So is Pemberton.’ Pyke looked up into Webb’s eyes. ‘But why am I telling you this? You already know.’

Webb’s stare drifted over Pyke’s shoulder. ‘Some folk reckon the storm was the worst they ever saw.’

‘The last I saw of them, Pemberton was out cold under the veranda and Malvern was wandering around on the lawn muttering to himself. This morning I found their corpses under a pile of plaster and brick rubble at the far end of the house. Someone had moved them there. You could see drag marks in the dust.’ Pyke paused. ‘Why did you have to kill Malvern? I mean, was it really necessary? Don’t you see? Eventually his father will just sell the land to some other buyer and you’ll be back where you started.’

Webb considered what Pyke had said for a while, his expression fixed in concentration. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘If you like.’ They regarded each other in awkward silence.

‘What will it take for you to go home and forget about everything you seen here, forget about the Malverns, Busha, the storm?’

‘And Mary, too?’

Webb looked at him and shrugged.

‘You loved her, didn’t you?’ Pyke took a step towards Webb and prodded him gently in the chest. ‘And yet you’re happy to see whoever killed her walk free?’

‘Mary dead and there ain’t nothing gonna bring her back.’ He walked a few yards along the track and motioned for Pyke to accompany him.

‘And what about Mary’s family? Her mother? Are they happy to see her murder go unpunished?’

Webb turned around very slowly. ‘Mary ain’t got family.’

Pyke nodded, as though he had expected Webb to say this, and casually removed the pistol that he’d tucked into his trousers. ‘This is just to protect myself.’ He registered Webb’s surprise and wondered whether he’d read the situation correctly. ‘You know. In case you have a notion to do to me what you did to Pemberton and Malvern.’

Webb looked down at the pistol without changing his expression. ‘Those men died in the storm.’

‘And Alefounder?’

‘The trader?’ Webb hesitated. ‘I found his body in the house. Someone reckon Charles shot him. Don’t know why.’

Pyke digested this news. Given what Charles Malvern had found out about the trader’s designs on his fiancee, Charles certainly had sufficient reason to kill Alefounder. ‘So where is his body? I didn’t see it when I searched the house this morning.’

‘I took care of it,’ Webb said, as though it wasn’t important. ‘Custos come here, see a man’s been shot, gonna be suspicious. Suddenly he might ask questions, wonder if Busha and Malvern really did die in the storm.’

Pyke searched his eyes. Webb, perhaps under Harper’s direction, was clearing up the mess, making sure that no one could link them with the deaths of two white men. Pyke didn’t believe that they wanted to kill him as well but something in Webb’s manner made him suspicious. It was why he was pointing the pistol in Webb’s general direction.

Guessing, he said, ‘You can tell Harper what you like. Tell him I escaped, tell him you killed me. But I’m going to take one of the horses and ride for Kingston. You have my word that you won’t ever see me again.’

Webb looked at the pistol, frowning. ‘Why you think I want to kill you?’

‘I don’t know for a fact that you do but I’m not taking any chances.’ Pyke waited and then sighed. ‘Maybe Harper thinks I’ll go back to England and tell Silas Malvern what happened to his son, what really happened to his son, and about your plans for his estate. If it fell into disrepair and a buyer couldn’t be found, there would be nothing to stop people from squatting on the land.’

‘Harper knows you ain’t a friend of the old massa.’

‘But I’m white.’

Webb noted this with a nod but didn’t say anything.

Pyke met his stare. ‘Just now you asked what it would take for me to walk away, not say a word about this to anyone.’

‘And?’

‘I have a young son in London. His mother died a few years ago. If anything were to happen to me, he’ll have no one. I know what that’s like and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.’