Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

A moment’s silence passed between them. She looked away, frowning. ‘How did you know the boy looked like James?’

When Pyke didn’t say anything, she thought about it and stumbled on the answer herself. ‘Oh God, you didn’t desecrate his grave, did you?’ Not trying to hide her disgust.

‘Emily and Felix had just been kidnapped. For a while, I thought you might have been responsible.’

‘ Me? I didn’t even know they’d been taken from you. I was just told you’d died in some terrible accident. You and Emily.’

‘And you didn’t think to investigate what Gore told you?’ Pyke shook his head. ‘You didn’t make enquiries about the funeral?’

‘I tried, but Gore told me I should concentrate on taking care of your son. He said that was what you would have wanted.’

‘And you lapped it up like a kitten in front of a fresh saucer of milk.’

Insulted, Marguerite sprang to her feet and stepped towards him. ‘Is that what you really think of me? Is that how little you know me?’

‘I don’t know you in the slightest. But I never really did, even when we were both younger.’

Her indignation cooled. ‘You have to believe me, Pyke. I didn’t know any of this. I didn’t know Emily and Felix had been taken from you.’ She hesitated, colour rising in her neck. ‘Your wife must be beside herself with worry…’

Pyke held up his hand. ‘I’m not going to play along with your little games.’

‘What games?’

‘Emily’s dead. But you knew that. You knew she’d been shot and killed by one of Gore’s assassins.’

Her gasp of astonishment may have sounded convincing to some but he wasn’t taken in by it. ‘But Gore had already warned you I was alive, hadn’t he? Warned you I’d come here looking for my son and told you Emily was dead.’

Marguerite stared down at her feet. The tips of her ears had turned crimson.

‘You knew but you didn’t leave. Why?’

When she looked at him, her eyes were cool and clear. ‘Because I didn’t want to steal your son from you.’

That, finally, broke him. ‘I’ve been in that house for fucking days now, sick with worry, not knowing whether my son was dead or alive, and all the while he was here with you, and you knew this and still did nothing…’ Saliva flew from his mouth and he had to suppress an urge to punch her face.

‘No, that’s not true.’ She stood and tried to grab his arm, his shoulder, anything she could hold on to.

He threw her to the ground. ‘I don’t ever want to see you again. If you ever try to contact us, me or my son, I’ll make sure it’s the last thing you ever do.’

Sobbing on the floor, she screamed, ‘It’s not finished for me. That’s why I insisted Eddy buy this house. So I could be near to you.’

‘Goodbye, Maggie.’

Felix appeared at the door and looked at them. He had been roused by their raised voices and was alarmed.

‘Come on, Felix, we’re going.’ Perhaps too hard, he tried to grab his son’s wrist.

Felix pulled his hand away and ran towards Marguerite, who gathered him up into her arms.

Pyke saw the wild look in her eyes and stepped towards her. ‘Put him down and we’ll talk. Please, Maggie. Don’t do anything stupid.’

‘Like fall in love with you?’

He took another step towards them. Felix tried to wriggle free but her grip around his waist tightened. ‘That was a lifetime ago, Maggie. We married other people, our lives have moved on…’

‘ You might have moved on…’

‘Maggie. Give me my son.’

‘Our son died.’ She retreated from him, towards the fire, her arms wrapped firmly around Felix, who was struggling to free himself.

‘Can’t you see, Maggie? You’re hurting him. You’re hurting the boy.’ Pyke took another step towards her.

‘That’s enough. Stay where you are, Pyke.’

‘Maggie, please. Think about Felix. Put him down and we can talk..’

‘I can’t be tricked that easily,’ she said, backing away, another step closer to the fire.

‘It’s not a trick. Put him down and we can talk. There’s nowhere left for you to go, Maggie.’

Much later, Pyke would dwell on the moment when Marguerite had turned to the fire and wonder whether she had really thought about trying to harm his son. In the end, it didn’t matter because she turned back towards him and let Felix go, her cheeks stained with her tears. Felix rushed into his arms and Pyke gathered him up and walked out of the room without looking at, or saying another word to Marguerite, who had crumpled to the floor and was sobbing uncontrollably.

That was the last time he saw her.

As Pyke led Felix down the stone steps at the front of the house, holding his hand, he said, ‘I’ll never, ever let anyone take you or try and hurt you again.’

‘Mrs Maggie didn’t actually hurt me,’ Felix said, matter-of-factly.

They walked on a little way in silence; ‘You know you’ve always wanted a dog,’ Pyke said, after a few hundred yards.

Felix looked up at him and nodded. ‘Mummy said she’d ask you.’

Pyke nodded, thinking about what Felix had just said. The boy didn’t know and he couldn’t bring himself to tell him. At least not yet. There was only so much the lad could take in a day.

‘Well, I might have found us a dog.’

‘A dog. We’ve got a dog.’ He trotted happily ahead. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Copper.’

‘Copper,’ Felix said, excitedly. ‘What kind of a dog is he?’

‘A mastiff. But you have to be very careful around him. He’s been very ill. And he only has three good legs.’ Pyke took Felix’s hand and, together, they started across the fields towards Hambledon.

Using the narrow staircase next to the old housekeeper’s room, Pyke descended into the cellar and, with only a lantern to guide him, followed the passageway as far as it would take him; at its end, just beyond the wine vault that he had steadily depleted in the six years since he’d been living at the hall, he unbolted a door and carefully negotiated his way down another flight of stairs, right into the belly of the building. Until a year ago, he had never been down there and didn’t even know it existed. He had stumbled upon it by accident, while looking for a casket belonging to Emily’s mother; in a rare lucid moment, just before her death, she’d told Emily about its existence, but neither Pyke nor Emily had been able to locate it. It was eerily quiet. This silence was reinforced by Pyke’s insistence that the four remaining servants take a week’s paid holiday and leave him alone in the old hall; but it didn’t really matter because down here no one would hear a man scream. It felt odd, knowing that it was just Felix, Copper and him in the building: Felix, who was asleep in his room, and Copper, who was stretched out by the fire in the drawing room. Just the three of them, if he didn’t count Sir Henry Bellows and Abraham Gore. Pyke followed a dark, winding corridor as far as it would take him and paused by the spot where he had left two pails of water and a tall stack of bricks earlier in the day. Unbolting another door, he pulled it open, the rusty hinges groaning as he did so. Putting the lantern down on the stone floor, he stepped into the room and saw the two of them, Gore and Bellows, tied up and gagged, on the other side of the wall that he had started to build and which already came up to his waist. Staring over the wall at the two men was like looking at hogs in a pen. The light had disturbed Gore and he squinted at Pyke, tugged at the bindings around his wrists and tried to speak through his gag. Bellows, who had been there almost a week, was slumped, unmoving, in the corner. The spartan room stank of the chief magistrate’s faeces, so much so that Pyke had nearly retched when he’d gone down there earlier in the day. Now, though, he had been expecting the stench and it didn’t affect him in the same way. It took him a while to climb through the narrow gap between the top of the wall and the ceiling and once he was inside the room, he removed Gore’s gag and prodded Bellows with his boot to see whether he was still alive. Returning to the other side of the wall, he started to mix some cement with water on a mason’s board. After a moment he heard Gore croak, ‘For God’s sake, man, can’t you see he’s dying? He needs food and water now.’