Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

‘His Royal Highness,’ Godfrey said, reaching for his wineglass.

‘It’s just an idea,’ Pyke said, shrugging.

Godfrey looked up at him. ‘You have an idea what might be in those letters, don’t you?’

Pyke smiled, as he always did when his uncle displayed his quickness of thought. ‘If I told you the play I saw was Johnny’s creation, would it shed light on my suspicions?’

‘You’re saying that Johnny read something in the letters and decided to dramatise the material in his play?’

‘Perhaps.’ He thought again about Peel and the fact that the Tory leader despised the duke as much as everyone else. But there was also the small matter of Peel’s visit to Huntingdon in person to inspect the headless corpse. Did he know or suspect it belonged to Johnny?

‘But that still doesn’t explain how or why Cumberland and Conroy are now on the same side.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Pyke hesitated, to gather together his thoughts. ‘But if Johnny did read the letters and dramatise their contents, it might explain why someone wanted to kill him.’

‘And let the play continue for almost a month?’

‘Perhaps the one who was looking for him, the glass-eyed man, didn’t wait around to watch the show.’ Pyke paused, and added, ‘And the fact it was shut down by the police suggests the involvement of some important figures. That kind of order would have come directly from Scotland Yard.’

Skin wrinkled at the corners of his uncle’s eyes. ‘Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?’

Pyke shrugged. ‘I just don’t think we can rule anything out. If I’m right, whatever was written in those letters has the potential to blow the current arrangements right out of the water.’

Godfrey took a gulp of air. ‘Even so, decapitating someone is a bit much, isn’t it?’

‘Not if whoever ordered it wanted Johnny dead and gone for ever. After all, it’s not easy identifying a man without a head.’

‘You managed.’

Pyke shrugged. ‘The man who killed Johnny and Kate Sutton’s parents won’t stop there, if he hasn’t already found the letters.’

Colour drained from his uncle’s cheeks. ‘It doesn’t augur well for Kate’s safety, does it?’

‘Not just Kate. I’d say you might be in the firing line. Me, as well.’ Pyke thought about the threat the glass-eyed man had made against Emily.

‘But those men only roughed me up. They didn’t try and kill me.’

‘Who knows what might have happened if I hadn’t shown up when I did.’

‘I know, dear boy. I know I’m in your debt.’

‘That’s not why I mentioned it,’ Pyke said, with a sigh. ‘I just think we both need to take extra precautions. Freddie Sutton wasn’t a threat to anyone and yet someone slit his throat as though he were no better than a tubercular pig.’

‘Quite.’

Pyke stood up and squeezed his hand. ‘Will you be all right?’

‘Me? I’ve never been better,’ Godfrey said, gloomily. ‘In case you wanted to have a little chat with him, I know Conroy lunches every Friday, without fail, at the Travellers’ Club. But be careful with him, my boy. If you push him too far he’s liable to explode.’

‘And that’s supposed to put me off?’

Godfrey acknowledged Pyke’s remark with a tilt of his head and a glint in his eye. ‘By the way, those handbills detailing Rockingham’s cruel practices are currently heading for Newmarket, even as we speak.’

Pyke couldn’t help but smile. ‘You wrote them yourself?’

‘In my best Marquis de Sade prose.’

‘He’s not going to like it, is he?’

‘You mean, when one of them gets posted through the door of the president of the Jockey Club?’

It was a moment of light relief but outside, when Pyke hailed a hackney coachman and asked the driver to take him back to Hambledon, he was still thinking about the glass-eyed man and the nonchalant way he had drawn his blade across the throat of the priest.

Emily was playing with Felix on the floor of the nursery when Pyke got home, and for a while he watched from the threshold; Emily had such an easy manner with the boy, Pyke thought with pride, and anyone could see that he adored her. When Pyke coughed, to draw attention to himself, Felix looked up and raced across to greet him. ‘Mummy was just tickling my feet,’ he said, as though the crime were a serious one.

‘Really?’ Pyke said, winking at Emily. ‘And do you think we should tickle Mummy’s feet?’

That made Felix squeal with delight and he raced back across the room to where Emily was sitting. ‘We’re going to tickle your feet,’ he boasted, ‘and it’s going to hurt.’ Pyke joined them, bending over to give Emily a kiss. ‘Why are you kissing her?’ Felix wanted to know.

‘If you like, I’ll kiss you, too,’ Pyke said, trying to grab his son.

Felix, though, was too quick for him. ‘Kissing’s for girls,’ he said authoritatively. ‘Girls and old people.’ Chasing after Felix on his hands and knees, Pyke caught up with him just as he was about to disappear under his bed and scooped him up into his arms, showering his head with kisses. Eventually Felix managed to wriggle free and demonstrably wiped both cheeks. ‘That was disgusting,’ he added firmly.

When Pyke next looked up, Milly was standing in the doorway, clutching her blanket.

‘Do you want to join us, Milly?’ Sitting up, Pyke held out his hand.

For a moment it looked as if she might take him up on his offer but her fortitude seemed to desert her at the last minute and she scurried back into her room.

When Pyke poked his head around her door, he saw that she had climbed back into bed. Stepping into the room, he told her that she didn’t need to be afraid, but she scuttled over to the far side of the bed and pulled the blankets over her head. Tentatively Pyke sat down on the edge of the bed and waited for a few moments. Finally Milly’s head emerged from under the sheet and she stared at him, perhaps trying to work out whether he posed a threat to her or not.

‘Do you like it here, Milly?’ He hesitated and looked around at the room. ‘Do you like your new room?’

After what seemed like an eternity, she gave him a very brief nod.

‘Do you want to stay?’

Again, another nod, this one more emphatic than the last.

‘You do? Because everyone here seems to think you’re unhappy and that I should take you back to your other home.’ He paused for a short while. ‘Are you unhappy here?’

This time she shook her head.

‘Can you talk, Milly? Because I want you to tell me what you saw that night…’

She stared down at the blanket, her head not moving.

‘Did you see the man who hurt your mama and papa?’

Milly looked up at him, a tear rolling down one of her cheeks. Pyke opened up his arms and the girl shuffled nervously across the thin bed. He gave her an awkward hug and told her that she didn’t have to say anything if she didn’t want to. She began to sob harder and before Pyke knew it her entire body was shaking in his arms, her arms clutching hold of him as though her life depended on it.

Later, Royce opened a bottle of claret and poured Pyke and Emily a glass each in the drawing room.

‘Did you think about what we talked about at the hospital?’ he asked, as he sat on the sofa next to her.

‘And what was that?’

‘About maybe spending more time here at Hambledon, until I’ve had the chance to determine what threat the man I told you about poses.’

‘I’m not going to be made a prisoner in my own home.’

‘And I’m just suggesting for a week or so.’

Emily put the wineglass down on the side table and turned to him. ‘I can’t do it. Not now. Not right at the moment.’