Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

Godfrey considered this point for a moment. ‘I suppose I would like my readers to see some of the unsavoury and immoral aspects of my hero in themselves.’

Pyke looked around the musty, untidy shop and realised that he had been going there to see his uncle for as long as he could remember. He also thought about their disagreements and their clashes over Pyke’s responsibilities as a father. They had always argued and Godfrey would say things that no one else dared to, but their fights were mostly short lived.

‘I’d like you to do something for me, Godfrey, but I’m afraid it involves Jemmy Crane.’ Pyke looked at his uncle and waited for a reaction.

‘Crane? Didn’t I tell you to leave that one well alone?’

‘I’d like you to persuade one of your acquaintances to play the part of a customer. Preferably the disreputable type, or at least the kind of man who wouldn’t blink at the sight of bare flesh, and having seen a little, might ask for something more risque. Rich and shambling would be ideal.’ Pyke waited. ‘You would be perfect but Crane knows of your connection to me.’

‘And you think that is the type of person I choose to associate with?’ He tried to appear hurt but Pyke could tell he was secretly delighted by the idea that he might appear to be rich and shambling.

‘I’m just asking that they play the part. I want them to go to Crane’s shop and ask for a daguerreotype, taken from life. I want them to offer an obscene sum of money but only on the condition that the daguerreotype is particularly low and offensive.’

‘How low and offensive?’

‘They’ll offer the usual copperplates depicting nude women but I want him to ask for something warmer and hence more expensive.’

‘Warm I like, expensive I don’t.’

‘Then I’d like him to be more specific. That is, I want him to pretend to desire women with facial deformities.’

‘Facial deformities? What is this, dear boy? You’re beginning to make me feel a little queasy.

‘You don’t need to know. Just tell your friend to make it clear that money is no object.’

‘But money is an object, isn’t it? Who’s going to fund this enterprise of yours?’

‘I was hoping I could persuade you to dip into the profits you’ve already accrued from the book.’

‘ Profits? God, dear boy, weren’t you listening to a word I said? And now the Lord Chancellor has banned any theatre shows based on my book for fear that they might incite young boys to criminality. That Morel-Roux has a lot to answer for. His arrest and trial might have helped sales in the short term but now the authorities are terrified that others will follow his lead and turn on their masters.’

‘But if Morel-Roux was shown to be innocent and he therefore wasn’t executed next week as planned, that might revive interest in your book?’

‘Not executed? What are you talking about? He’s due to hang in just over one week.’

‘He didn’t kill Bedford.’ Pyke didn’t know this for certain — the valet could always have been paid by someone to kill his master — but, in light of what he’d found out in Jamaica, he would have bet money on the man’s innocence.

Godfrey sat forward in his armchair and removed his glasses. ‘Do you know that for a fact?’

‘I can’t prove it yet. But I’d swear on Felix’s life that he didn’t do it.’

‘That’s terrible. An innocent man going to the gallows. It can’t be allowed to happen.’

‘Will you help me or not?’

‘Anything, dear boy, anything.’ Godfrey wiped the perspiration from his forehead. ‘But how are you going to stop the execution?’

‘I don’t know.’

Godfrey seemed dazed. Like everyone, he had laboured under the assumption that the valet was guilty. But now this certainty had been thrown into doubt, he didn’t know what to do.

Later, as Pyke was preparing to leave, Godfrey went over to his desk and riffled through a stack of papers. ‘I had a visit from one of your old acquaintances, Ned Villums, while you were away. This would have been about three weeks ago. He left me his address and asked me to tell you to contact him when you returned.’ Holding up a piece of paper, Godfrey added, ‘I knew I hadn’t lost it.’

Pyke took the address. ‘Did Ned say what he wanted?’

But Godfrey’s expression had darkened. ‘Field, Crane and now Villums. You’re keeping illustrious company these days, aren’t you, dear boy?’

Early the next morning, before Jo, Felix or even Copper had risen, Pyke walked from the house in Pentonville to Clerkenwell and the address Godfrey had given him. It was warm, despite the earliness of the hour, but the air felt pleasant rather than muggy. The mist that had hung over the city for the past few days seemed to have lifted and there were just a few high clouds in the otherwise clear sky. Though the shops hadn’t yet pulled up their shutters, the streets were surprisingly busy; drays and barrows mostly, costermongers and other tradesmen already preparing for the new day. There was also a steady trickle of commuters heading towards the City, grabbing breakfast from the street vendors and eating it as they walked.

Pyke had known Ned Villums for more than half his life. As the former landlord of the Old Cock Inn in Holborn, he had presided over a large gambling and bookmaking operation. He had also fed Pyke — then a Bow Street Runner — with snippets of information which had, in turn, damaged the interests of his rivals; and he had been well paid for doing so. Latterly, he had become one of the underworld’s most successful receivers, largely because he was very careful about what he agreed to handle. Mostly he dealt with specialist, expensive items, often stolen to order. His success could be measured by the fact that he had never been arrested, let alone spent any time in prison. Indeed, the New Police didn’t seem to know he existed. He worked with a small group of loyal associates and took as few risks as possible. That he could also be as ruthless as someone like Field was another reason for his success. Pyke had seen Villums kill a man with his bare hands then sit down to eat a meal with the corpse still at his feet.

Pyke knew that Villums was an early riser and found him in his office on the corner of St John and Compton Streets. He hadn’t been there before but it was as bare as he’d expected: a wainscoted partition, a shelf or two, a large oak desk, a couple of stools, a clock on the mantelpiece above the fire and a map of London on the wall. Villums had never been one to draw attention to his wealth.

Perhaps ten years older than Pyke, Villums was slow and heavy on his feet, with a poor complexion and a hatchet-like profile. In his torn velveteen coat and corduroy trousers, he still dressed like a tavern landlord rather than a man who, when Pyke had last asked him, earned fifty thousand a year. They greeted each other warmly and Villums invited him to take one of the stools while he uncorked a bottle of whisky and poured out two generous measures. For a few minutes they talked about the old days and the people they’d once known who were now either dead or in prison.

‘I suppose you’re wondering why I left a message for you,’ Villums said, pouring them another drink.

Pyke nodded.

‘Would I be right in thinking that you’ve got yourself mixed up with the likes of Harold Field and Jemmy Crane?’

‘How did you hear that?’

‘What I’m going to tell you goes no farther than these four walls.’ Pyke gave him a hard stare. ‘Of course.’

‘All right. Good. So, a few months ago, I had a visit from Crane. He wanted to know whether I’d be interested in fencing a large quantity of gold.’

‘What did you tell him?’