Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

In the intervening years, he had often wondered why she hadn’t conceived again. The first time, it had happened quite quickly, within a year of the marriage, allaying fears carried over from a former attachment that he might be infertile. But Emily’s recovery had been long and slow and it had taken a full year before she had been ready to try for more children. The physician who had treated her said there was no reason why this shouldn’t happen, but for some reason it never had and, in recent months, they had stopped talking about it as a possibility.

Pyke looked down at his uncle’s sleeping face. ‘Apart from Felix, the only people that matter to me are right here in this room.’

Emily squeezed his hand and smiled gently. ‘Do I detect a subtle rebuke in your tone?’

‘Captain Paine may want to improve the lot of the poor and destitute. I just want to keep my family safe.’

It seemed to amuse her. ‘Is that what you were doing the other afternoon when we visited Granby Street?’ She hesitated, licking her lips. ‘Or why that little girl is in one of the rooms at Hambledon?’

Pyke took her hand and waited for a few moments. ‘The other night, just before I found Godfrey in his shop, I turned the tables on this man who’d been following me. I chased him into St Paul’s where he killed one of the priests. You might have read about it in the newspaper. Just before he escaped — he was holding a knife to the priest’s throat at the time — he made a threat against you.’

‘What kind of a threat?’

‘His exact words were, “Tell that bitch of yours to watch her back.” Pyke stared at her across the bed. ‘Why would he say something like that?’

Emily shrugged. ‘You don’t know who he was and why he was following you?’

‘No.’ He didn’t want to tell her about the glass-eyed man’s brutality and unnecessarily scare her but he wanted her to know that his threat was a serious one.

‘Then I don’t see what I can do about it.’

Pyke let go of her hand and glanced down at his uncle. ‘Perhaps you should think twice about maintaining such a public presence.’

‘You want me to stop doing what I do?’ A hardness had entered her voice.

‘I don’t know what you’ve been doing,’ Pyke said, losing his patience. ‘That’s my point. If I did, I could judge the potential threat to your safety.’

‘And how about what you do? Have you thought to tell me about the problems you seem to be facing?’

‘We can talk about this another time,’ Pyke said, noticing that Godfrey had stirred ever so slightly. ‘But for now, promise me you’ll take extra precautions. I’m being deadly serious, Emily. This man was not someone to be taken lightly. I just think you should lie low for the next week or so, while I see if I can turn up any information.’

Emily left shortly after that, saying she wanted to get back to Hambledon in time to say goodnight to Felix. Pyke asked her to send Felix his love and make sure that Milly was all right.

It was only on the third day after the attack that Godfrey rallied sufficiently for the physician to declare that he was ‘out of immediate danger’. That afternoon, after Halford had departed, his pockets loaded with money, Pyke helped his uncle to a few sips of beer he’d smuggled into the hospital from the Old Red Lion.

‘It’s not gin but I suppose it’ll have to do,’ Godfrey said, as streaks of the brown liquid dribbled down his chin.

Pyke wanted to tell Godfrey how much he meant to him and how scared he’d been at the thought of the old man’s death but somehow the words wouldn’t come. Instead, he explained to Godfrey that the libel charges against him had been dropped. That seemed to cheer him up no end.

‘That’s bloody marvellous news,’ Godfrey said, taking another swig of ale. ‘How did it happen? They seemed to have the bit between their teeth this time.’

Pyke told him about his dealings with Abraham Gore and Gore’s intervention on Godfrey’s behalf.

‘The banker?’ Godfrey didn’t bother to conceal his surprise. ‘Why would he want to help me?’

‘I think he wants me to like him.’

‘And do you?’

‘I don’t know. He’s always been very open and honest with me.’ Quickly he told the story of Gore’s arrival at the coroner’s meeting and the invectives he’d heaped on Sir Henry Bellows.

‘A man after my own heart,’ Godfrey said, laughing. ‘Do you think Bellows knew about his intervention in my case?’

‘Yes, I’m sure he did.’ Pyke thought about it some more. ‘But he was wary around Gore in a way that he wasn’t with me.’

Godfrey nodded. ‘That would seem about right. If I were you, my boy, I wouldn’t underestimate Gore’s influence. I’ve heard he’s a generous man, gives a lot of his money to charity, but he didn’t get to where he is now without cracking a few eggs.’

Pyke absorbed the warning and steered the conversation back to the incident in the shop. Who had the men been, for example?

‘Never seen the blighters before in my life,’ Godfrey said, with clear indignation.

‘But you know who might have sent them or what they wanted?’

‘They kept asking me for the letters, as though I’d know precisely what they were talking about.’

‘What letters?’

‘I don’t know for certain, dear boy.’ Godfrey ruffled his mane of bone-white hair. ‘I think it might have had something to do with the missing girl and the court case.’

He must have seen Pyke’s jaw clench because almost at once he asked, ‘What is it, dear boy?’

Pyke told him about finding Freddie Sutton and his wife in their Spitalfields shack, their throats cut. He also mentioned the young daughter, now recuperating at Hambledon, and explained how, when he had returned to Spitalfields with the police, the dead bodies had been removed. The police, he added, didn’t seem to believe a crime had actually been committed.

Godfrey took the news very badly, as Pyke suspected he might, but the shock was not sufficient to induce further chest problems. ‘And you think the two men who attacked me might have done for the parents?’ He seemed aghast and genuinely frightened by this prospect.

‘Perhaps,’ Pyke said, adjusting his position on the hard wooden chair. ‘I found this on the one who fell under the phaeton,’ he added, retrieving the cravat pin from his pocket and showing it to his uncle.

The silver object glinted in the candlelight as Godfrey sat up in the bed to inspect it. ‘I wouldn’t mind wagering it’s the coat of arms for one of the military regiments. Can I hold on to it for a few days?’

‘By all means,’ Pyke said, thinking about the six dragoons who had chased him on horseback in Cambridgeshire and wondering whether there might be a connection. Certainly Jake Bolter, Septimus Yellowplush and Sir Horsley Rockingham were either affiliated with or had once served in the same regiment: the 31st, which was barracked somewhere near Huntingdon.

Bolter and Yellowplush were brothers in arms, having gone down in the same ship in the Bay of Biscay and lived to tell the tale, and their apparent closeness seemed to shed light on an important aspect of the conspiracy to halt the northward progress of the Grand Northern Railway. They had perhaps acted together to stir up the navvies and hence retard the construction work north of Cambridge, but had they conspired to kill Morris and make it look like a suicide? And, as Peel seemed to believe, was there any connection between their machinations and the headless corpse that had turned up in the River Ouse?

Pyke stood up and stretched his legs. ‘You don’t have any idea what these letters might refer to or be about?’

‘From what I could grasp, the men in my shop seemed to believe Kate Sutton had stolen them from Kensington Palace and had passed them on to me.’