Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

Pyke nodded for him to continue.

‘He cornered me in the supper room. He wanted someone to confide in. He knew I knew about the ten thousand. He told me someone was blackmailing him. He didn’t say what it was about and I didn’t ask. But he also told me he knew who it was. He said he’d hired someone to follow the money. I thought we’d been careful but he knew; he gave me my friend’s name. The right address, as well. He’d only just heard about it that night. He told me he was going to take action in the morning. I panicked. At first I just wanted to shut him up. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find — a table weight — and hit him with it. I must have hit him harder than I’d first thought. He went down and stopped moving. I didn’t stop to see whether I’d killed him or not. I fled through one of the doors at the back of the building.’

Pyke studied his expression, trying to detect obvious signs that he’d been lying, but there weren’t any. Nash was good. He deserved credit for that, at least. ‘But someone saw you, didn’t they? Someone saw what you’d done; someone saw you standing there over Morris’s body. Tell me. Was it Gore and Bolter or just Bolter on his own? No, Gore would have had to have been there.’

Nash stared at him, aghast. ‘How did you know?’

‘Gore liked Morris. Even though they were rivals and despite the fact that he had no compunction about killing insignificant people, poor people, Gore had never wanted to actually kill Morris. Of course, he could have called the police there and then and handed you to them on a plate. But Gore saw an opportunity, didn’t he? He recognised you. He realised you worked for me. He had Bolter hide the body. Then he sat you down and proceeded to get everything he wanted out of you. I’m guessing he approved of your plan to steal the loan papers from the vault: anything to weaken my grip on the bank. But he must have asked for something else; he must have wanted something else. That’s when I thought about your five per cent stake in the bank. In the case of your death, your shares were meant to come back to me. I assumed you were dead. I assumed the five per cent stake would revert to my ownership. Gore made an offer for a third share of the bank and told me he’d be happy if I retained a fifty-one per cent controlling interest in it. In reality he had your five per cent in his pocket as well. I wouldn’t have known this at the time but you’d already agreed to sell him your shares, hadn’t you? And together with William’s holdings, it would have given Gore a controlling interest in the bank and allowed him to steal it from under my nose.’ Pyke looked around him and shrugged. ‘All Bolter had to do was stay behind, with or without the caretaker’s knowledge, and make Morris’s death look like a suicide. If Morris’s death had been proven to be murder, the spotlight might have fallen on Gore’s sharp business practices. No, suicide was the best verdict all around. The best for you; the best for Gore. But I just have one more question that I need you to answer.’ Pyke knelt down on the carpet and whispered in Nash’s ear, ‘Why did you send the deeds to Morris’s estate to his widow?’

‘Because Gore asked me to.’

‘Just like that?’

Nash shrugged. ‘The papers didn’t mean anything to me.’

Pyke thought about it for a moment. What did it prove? On its own, nothing. But it did raise another, altogether more disturbing prospect. What if Gore was involved with Marguerite?

‘What’s going to happen to me?’ Nash looked around for a possible escape route but there was nowhere for him to go.

Pyke pointed down at the Turkey carpet. ‘There’s a wheelbarrow waiting outside and a skiff moored by the Arundel stairs. I’m going to wrap you up in the carpet, haul you outside to the barrow and wheel you down to the skiff. Of course by then you’ll be dead and none of this will matter.’

Nash started to smile. ‘That’s a joke, right?’

Removing his knife, Pyke shook his head. ‘You should know by now I never joke when it comes to killing someone.’

‘You can’t help me?’ Nash’s pleading expression made Pyke hate him even more. ‘Not even for old time’s sake? Please…’ He tried to leap up from his chair and push past Pyke but didn’t make it up off his feet.

It took him less than five minutes to cart the large barrow down the narrow lane to the waiting skiff and another few minutes to lift the carpet, which he’d tied up with rope and weighed down with stones, into the boat. The chilly night air smelled of rotten fish and raw sewage. Leaving the barrow at the top of the stairs, Pyke used the sculls to push himself away from the bank and began to row, each stroke taking him farther towards the middle of the river and giving him a clearer view of the lattice of wharfs and warehouses that lined the bank. Despite its stench, Pyke had always loved the dirty brown Thames. He had always loved walking along the cramped, muddy lanes that led down to the river and suddenly coming on it and being assailed by its vastness, the flotsam and jetsam of humanity, water and sky merging into one, the buildings made to look insignificant in its wake. But on this occasion, Pyke wasn’t thinking about the grubby majesty of the river or how small and quiet the city looked from such a vantage point. Rather he steered the skiff out into the part of the river where the tide was strongest, picked up one end of the carpet, lifted it over the edge of the boat and pushed from the other end. Weighed down by the stones, it sank without a trace, just a few bubbles rippling the surface, and then everything went quiet. Pyke started to row back towards the bank, thinking only about Felix and whether he had already met a similar fate.

‘My dear boy, you look terrible.’ Godfrey gave him an awkward hug. ‘Aren’t they feeding you properly?’ They were standing in the entrance hall at Hambledon, the hack-chaise that his uncle had arrived in disappearing along the driveway. Royce appeared and took Godfrey’s coat. Pyke told him to bring a bottle of claret to the drawing room and led his uncle past the old chapel, which he had converted into a billiards room, explaining that Royce hadn’t spoken a word to him since he’d dismissed all but four of the servants a few days earlier.

‘I hope you didn’t get rid of the cook. As I said, you could do with being fed a little.’

‘The cook, Royce, Jennings to drive the carriage, and Jo.’ Pyke pushed open the door and looked at the piano, for a moment expecting Emily to be there playing, her face fixed in concentration and her body moving to the rhythm of the piece. Godfrey followed him into the room and they both gravitated towards the fire burning in the grate.

‘Dare I even ask? Is there any news?’

Pyke shook his head.

There were a hundred men combing the streets of the city looking for any sign of his son — and he’d put up a reward of ten thousand pounds — but no one had seen or heard a thing.

‘Royce thinks I’ve acted callously towards people, some of whom worked here for more than twenty years.’

Godfrey stared down at the fire. ‘Well, the old place certainly seems a lot quieter.’ Realising what he’d said, he added, quickly, ‘I didn’t mean… I’m so sorry, dear boy. I just meant…’

Pyke waved away the apology. ‘I’m sure he thinks I’ve pissed on everything he holds dear.’

‘Perhaps you’ll regret the hastiness of your actions later, once this is finished and Felix is returned to you, and you’ll reconsider..’ Pyke gave his uncle a hard stare and he reddened and stammered, ‘Then again, perhaps you won’t.’

‘Sometimes I think about taking a torch to this whole building and watching it go up in flames.’

Godfrey shuffled awkwardly in front of the fire. ‘I’ve come from the city. The situation is still dire…’