Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

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At first, Pyke didn’t hear the shouts from the front of the room but it soon became apparent that something was wrong: the door had been flung open and a stiff breeze filled the fetid room. Then he saw them, their tall stovepipe hats above the bobbing heads of the crowd, a dozen or more police constables forcing their way into the room, wielding rattles and leather truncheons. One of them fought his way up on to the stage and announced that the show was being closed until further notice and the management and actors were being pursued on charges of sedition. If apprehended, Pyke supposed the key players might even face the scaffold.

The actors seemed to realise their predicament even before the police sergeant had spoken and, having discarded their costumes, they bolted for the exits, along with the rest of the crowd. Pyke followed the one who had played Cumberland down an alleyway that ran along the side of the building and caught up with him in a small court. Others flooded past them but Pyke kept a steely grip on the man’s coat and forced him up against one of the walls. The yard was cluttered with disused costermongers’ carts and a trough for pigs and sheep to feed from.

‘Please don’t hurt me, mister.’ His back was facing the wall and his hands were raised to protect his face.

‘I just want to talk,’ Pyke said, keeping his tone measured as he opened his hands out in front of him.

‘That’s what the other bruiser said, before he did this to me.’ The actor tore open his shirt and let Pyke see three circular burn marks on his left shoulder.

They were identical to the marks he’d found on the bodies of the headless man and the old crone in Huntingdon.

Pyke didn’t try to hide his shock. ‘Did he burn you with a cigar?’

That drew a puzzled expression. ‘How did you know?’

Pyke gave a description of the man — heavily whiskered and sporting a glass eye. ‘Did he do this to you?’

The actor seemed nonplussed. ‘He wanted to know where he could find Johnny. I told him I didn’t know but he didn’t believe me.’

Pyke felt his mind unravel with the confusion. How was it possible that the same man had been hunting for letters stolen from Conroy as well as inciting the navvies to violence in Huntingdon?

‘When was this?’

The actor seemed taken aback by the urgency in his voice. ‘I’d say a month ago.’ The burn marks had faded in the intervening period.

‘Can you be more exact?’

The actor scratched his chin. ‘The show here had just started. It would’ve been the first week in October.’

It was just before he had been summoned to the Houses of Parliament; before he had first travelled to Huntingdon. Pyke closed his eyes and tried to imagine the headless corpse he’d seen there. ‘Did Johnny have a scar running down the entire length of one of his arms?’

The actor seemed too bewildered to speak.

‘Well, did he or not?’ Pyke reined in the urge to shake him.

‘Yes, he did. I think it was his right arm. I remember seeing it when he took off his shirt to give a speech from Hamlet.’

Pyke contemplated this for a moment, reeling from the shock. ‘Was Johnny about six feet tall, with broad shoulders and well-developed arm and leg muscles?’

The man nodded dumbly. ‘And dark curly hair.’

So it had to be true. The headless corpse in Huntingdon belonged to Kate Sutton’s lover.

Pyke steadied himself against the trough and tried to collect his thoughts. It still didn’t make any sense. How was Johnny’s murder linked to the troubles in Huntingdon? He thought about the decapitated corpse he had seen in the cellar of the watch-house and about the bloody demise of his own assistant, unable to see how the two deaths might be connected.

‘Has something happened to him? Has something happened to Johnny?’

‘You could say that.’ Pyke looked at the people still streaming out of the building. ‘Did you ever see him with a girl?’ He gave a brief description of Kate.

‘No, but he used to boast about fucking a girl who worked in one of the palaces.’

‘And he didn’t say anything to you about some letters that might have come into his possession?’

The actor shook his head forlornly. ‘We weren’t never close. Johnny was always too full of himself for the rest of us.’

Pyke waited for a moment. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about the man who attacked you? Anything at all that might help me find him.’

The young actor closed his eyes and opened them again. ‘What he did to me.’ He pointed to the burn marks on his chest and winced. ‘It was the longest cigar I’ve ever seen in my life.’ There were tears in his eyes. Pyke left him next to the pig trough to reminisce about his unpleasant experiences.

*

‘A plot by Cumberland to seize the throne from the young princess, eh?’ Godfrey removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. He was stretched out on the sofa in the front room of his Camden Town apartment, a blanket covering his legs. ‘I seem to remember a rumour to that effect circulating five or six years ago, though Cumberland always denied it.’

‘Weren’t there claims he had paid one of the princess’s servants to slip something into her bread and milk?’

‘Indeed,’ Godfrey said, with a frown. ‘But you say this “play” had Cumberland in league with Conroy?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Ah, you see, as far as I know, those two men have always despised one another. The Duke of Cumberland might covet the throne but Conroy’s long-term interests depend on preserving the princess’s health. I just can’t see what he’d gain by switching to another horse halfway through the race.’

Pyke scratched his chin. ‘Of course, Cumberland is soon to appear before a select committee chaired by the radical, Joseph Hume, accused of using his position as Imperial Grand Master of the Orange Order to ferment opposition to the King.’

It was a well-known secret that the duke held his older brother in low regard and considered his heir, a sixteen-year-old girl, unfit for the task of defending the ascendancy and the British Empire from foreign aggressors. Whether he would sanction a coup d’etat against his brother and young niece and risk certain death if he failed was another matter. But as the grand master of more than three hundred thousand Orangemen, many of them belonging to the armed forces, the cantankerous duke was certainly capable of launching such an action.

‘Surely even the Prince of Blood wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and seize the throne from the King or the princess.’ Godfrey sipped his claret. ‘To say there’d be an outcry would be an understatement. Working folk wouldn’t wear it. It would bring the country to the brink of revolution.’

Pyke agreed. It was a horrible proposition. ‘But let’s just say there was something in the letters that encouraged Cumberland’s prospects…’

‘What kind of thing?’

‘I don’t know. Some kind of damaging revelation about the King or the princess.’

Godfrey sat up on the sofa and rearranged the blanket. ‘In which case Cumberland would want to find the letters every bit as much as Conroy. If, that is, he’s learned of their existence.’

Pyke got up from the armchair and wandered across to the window. He had grown up in this apartment and still found its musty smell vaguely reassuring. ‘Did you have any luck examining that cravat pin?’

Godfrey shook his head but told Pyke that he’d invited an expert in military affairs over for lunch the next day and would pick his brains then.

‘Because I was thinking about the two men who came to your shop. You reckoned one of them said something about “H” not being pleased. What if you missed the first bit? What if he’d actually said, “ HRH won’t be pleased”?’ You see what I mean? Perhaps they were sent there by Cumberland.’

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