Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

‘You don’t think Sobers killed her, do you?’

Tilling’s question sounded genuine rather than defensive. For a moment they stared at one another, trying to appraise each other’s views on the subject.

‘Silas Malvern went to see Sir Richard Mayne yesterday and Mayne talked to you. That’s how you know I’ve just returned from Jamaica, isn’t it?’

Tilling nodded. He knew it was pointless to deny the accusation. ‘It would seem you didn’t exactly endear yourself to the old boy at an anti-slavery meeting at Exeter Hall.’

They both looked up at a pretty woman who sat down at the table next to them. ‘I think he’s somehow involved in Mary Edgar’s murder.’

‘Any particular reason?’

Pyke thought about telling Tilling what he’d found out in Jamaica but decided to keep it to himself for the moment.

‘Just so you know, and this comes directly from Mayne, Silas Malvern is not a suspect. From the beginning he’s cooperated with our investigation and what he’s told us has been thoroughly investigated.’

‘By Pierce?’

‘At the risk of offending you, let me repeat myself. Malvern is not a suspect. That’s all you need to know.’

‘Did Malvern tell you that Lord Bedford was godfather to his son Charles?’

Tilling stared at him; he understood the implication of this immediately. ‘Go on.’

‘Charles made a private arrangement with his godfather for Mary Edgar, his fiancee, to stay with Bedford at his Norfolk Street residence because he knew his father wouldn’t approve of him marrying a mulatto.’

A brief, uncomfortable silence passed between them. ‘Do you have any proof of this?’

Pyke took out the letter he’d taken from the great house at Ginger Hall and handed it to Tilling.

‘It makes no reference to Mary Edgar by name,’ Tilling said, once he’d read it. ‘And from what I gather, Charles Malvern is now dead.’

‘But it establishes a link between Charles Malvern and Lord Bedford. And Malvern’s engagement to Mary Edgar was common knowledge in Falmouth.’

‘Falmouth?’

‘A port town on the north coast of Jamaica.’

Tilling scratched his chin. ‘To take this farther, I’m going to need some hard evidence. Did any of Bedford’s servants know about the arrangement?’

‘Bedford’s butler knew. Apparently Mary Edgar stayed in a basement annexe, so as not to arouse the suspicion of the rest of the household. Morel-Roux told me he thought Bedford had a mistress.’

A frown passed across Tilling’s forehead. ‘When did you speak to him?’

Briefly Pyke told Tilling about the arrangements Godfrey had made for his visit to the valet’s cell.

Tilling took a sip of his coffee and stared out of the window. Pyke could tell he was upset by what he’d just heard, even if his expression was outwardly calm. ‘I’m told the evidence against Morel-Roux was overwhelming. For God’s sake, the man didn’t even offer a defence. The jury took only a few minutes to return a verdict of guilty.’

‘In the same way that Arthur Sobers isn’t, for the moment, offering a defence?’

‘I can’t believe you actually think we knowingly seek to punish innocent men? Besides, the circumstances of these two cases are completely different.’ But for the first time the extent of Tilling’s unease was showing.

‘Are they? Mary Edgar was staying in Bedford’s house. Both Mary and Bedford were killed. How likely is it that Morel-Roux committed both murders? How likely is it that Sobers committed both murders?’

Tilling contemplated this. ‘You said just now that Lord Bedford’s butler knew about the arrangement with Mary?’

‘I’m not saying he knew who Mary Edgar really was or that she’d been murdered. But he knew she was staying there.’ Pyke took out the charcoal sketch from his pocket and handed it to Tilling. ‘It probably isn’t an exact likeness, but show it to the man and see if he recognises her.’

‘Give me a few days,’ Tilling said, folding up the drawing and putting it into his pocket. ‘In the meantime, stay away from Silas Malvern.’

‘I want to see Sobers,’ Pyke said, hoping to take advantage of the rapprochement that seemed to be taking place between them.

‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question.’

‘I want to see him anyway.’ Pyke waited. ‘If he isn’t talking to anyone, what harm can it do?’

Standing up, Tilling pulled his coat on. ‘I’ll see what I can arrange. Where can I contact you?’

Pyke scribbled down his address on a scrap of paper and pushed it across the table. ‘What date has been set for Morel-Roux’s execution?’

‘Just over a week.’

‘That soon?’

‘Once the Home Secretary turned down his appeal, the judge didn’t see any reason to delay it.’

‘I suppose not,’ Pyke said, thinking about the crowds that would gather to watch the hanging.

‘I’ve barely made a farthing out of the whole enterprise, dear boy, and that’s the God’s honest truth. Ever since the vultures in the cheap presses stripped my work of literature down to its carcass and sold it in roughly bound editions using the cheapest paper for a few pennies, I’ve lost a large chunk of my readership. It’s robbery, m’boy, and I don’t know why I should stand for it.’

Pyke relaxed into the threadbare armchair and grinned. ‘Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but wasn’t that exactly how you made your money for much of your career?’ It was afternoon and they were sitting across from one another at the back of Godfrey’s gloomy basement shop.

‘A detail, dear boy. And remember that as a convert to the pursuit of artistic excellence, I have seen the error of my ways.’

Pyke looked at his uncle, amazed not only that he was still alive, given his prodigious appetite for food and wine, but also that he still had the energy to care about what he wrote and published. ‘And great art can’t be reproduced on cheap paper?’

‘It can be printed on bum fodder for all I care, so long as I get what’s owed to me.’

‘You’re just sour because Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard is still selling more copies than your book.’

‘Ainsworth is a crashing bore. Have you tried to read Jack Sheppard? I did and found myself drowning in his turgid prose. And as for Rookwood, I was asleep before I’d finished the first chapter.’

‘I don’t know these novelists. But I read Oliver Twist on the journey back from the West Indies.’

‘Much better but still too much moralising. Don’t tell me your heart didn’t sink when the point of view changed from Fagin and Sykes to Brownlow and the Maylies.’

Pyke smiled because there was an element of truth in what his uncle had just said. But what he had liked about Dickens’s work was its lack of sentimentality, at least in its depictions of the underworld. Fagin and Sykes were presented as they were, nasty and venal, not to make some kind of political point. He knew people like that. It had once been his job to arrest them.

‘Didn’t you once tell me that the point of your book was to offend the sensibilities of the middling classes? In which case, what do you care if your words have been vulgarised for the purpose of appealing to the working poor?’

‘Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? The whole point of my book was to make as much money as possible.’

‘And not to offend readers who expect literature to give them clear moral guidance?’

This was the nub of the debate raging in newspapers and periodicals about so-called ‘Newgate’ novels; that, wittingly or otherwise, they celebrated criminality by presenting their rogue protagonists in a vaguely sympathetic light, and therefore encouraged the working poor to contemplate breaking the law.