Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

Pyke gave the room a quick search but apart from a knife that he kept next to his mattress there was nothing of interest. Downstairs he found the madam, Mrs Bennett, and paid her five pounds to arrange to have the body thrown into the river. He asked her about Bolter and the dog and whether they had ever visited Trotter, but she shook her head and said she’d never seen them.

Pyke had shot a man but didn’t feel a thing: neither vindication nor relief, despite the unforgivable crimes that Trotter had committed. Still, as he walked back along Tooley Street in the direction of the river, he thought about what Trotter had said and experienced a sudden flutter in his heart. I hope they die. It suggested to him that Emily and Felix were both still alive.

At half-past midday he met Godfrey’s lawyer, Geoffrey Quince, a King’s bencher no less, on the other side of Bow Street from the magistrates’ court. He had bought a new set of clothes and had washed himself in a tub of icy water in the kitchen of number forty-four but he could still smell his own sweat. Quince didn’t seem to notice or care and didn’t comment on the bruise under Pyke’s eye or his broken nose. Either he was completely unobservant, Pyke decided, or very diplomatic.

‘Did you see Bellows, then?’ Pyke asked, once they had found a seat in the nearby Brown Bear tavern.

Quince nodded. He placed his stovepipe hat on his lap and adjusted his pale grey cravat. ‘But the man you described, Julian Jackman, wasn’t being held in any of the cells or the felons’ room.’ He glanced disparagingly around the smoky room. ‘To be honest, there wasn’t anyone down there who didn’t look like they belonged.’

‘And how was Bellows when you demanded to be allowed to inspect the cells?’

Quince shrugged. ‘He didn’t seem concerned one way or the other.’

Silently Pyke cursed his luck. He’d hoped that finding Jackman might shed some light on what had happened to Emily, and now he didn’t know where else to look for the radical.

‘Did he admit to playing a role in the raiding of various haunts frequented by the radicals in the East End?’

Quince paused to consider this. ‘I think he might have smiled a little when I put the question to him but he chose not to answer it.’

‘Smiled? As if he was amused?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps it wasn’t a smile. Look, Pyke, I did what you wanted me to do and your friend wasn’t there. Perhaps Bellows had some idea why I was there but then again perhaps he didn’t.’

‘And he didn’t come across as nervous, as if he was trying to hide something?’

‘I don’t understand.’ Quince stared down his long nose at Pyke. ‘What would the chief magistrate be trying to hide?’

That afternoon, while he waited for Townsend to see whether there had been any further news delivered to the bank or Hambledon, he paid Barnaby Hodges a visit at his gaming house in Regent’s Quadrant. He was a squirrelly, ferret-faced man with sharp features and a mop of raven-black hair, and he agreed to talk to Pyke only when Jem Nash’s name was mentioned. Pyke also let it be known that he was an associate of Villums. That helped to open doors as well.

‘I’m presuming Villums explained that your boy owed my establishment just over seven thousand pounds when he was killed.’

‘Don’t get excited,’ Pyke said, staring at Hodges across his desk. ‘I’m not here to settle his debt.’

Hodges wrapped his spindly fingers around a glass of whisky and brought it up to his lips. ‘I heard you’d made him a minor partner in the bank. I talked to my lawyer. We would be within our rights to claim our debt against his share of your profits.’

‘If you want to try, be my guest.’

Hodges drank some more of the whisky. ‘Ned Villums warned me about you. Said I should be especially careful in your company.’

‘I just want to know whether you or anyone sent by you had any contact with Jem Nash on the night he was killed.’

Hodges sat back in his chair and looked around his small office. ‘Like I told Ned, I sent one of my best men to chivvy Nash along a bit. He disappeared around the time that Nash was murdered.’

‘And you haven’t seen or heard from him since?’ Pyke regarded him sceptically.

‘That’s right.’

Abruptly Pyke stood up and pulled down his frock-coat. ‘I won’t take up any more of your time.’

‘If you hear something from my lawyer,’ Hodges called out after him, ‘try not to take it personally.’

But when six rolled around Townsend brought him no further news. Jo had passed word from Hambledon that no ransom letter had been delivered there. Nor had there been any word from Gore.

It had been more than four days since the abduction and Pyke was still no closer to finding Emily and Felix.

For an hour or so after Townsend had left, he wandered up and down the staircase of the enormous house, both to keep warm and to try to think of anything he might have missed. The Ionic columns of the first-floor mezzanine and the cut-glass chandelier that hung from the roof seemed to mock his pretensions, and the architectural flourishes, which he had initially found so entrancing, now seemed to be no more than bloated monuments to his vanity. As his footsteps echoed right the way up into the dome he tried to reassure himself with the thought that he had only paid a deposit and hadn’t committed himself for the whole year.

In the grand chamber room — that was what the agent had called it, anyway — Pyke built a fire using the last of the kindling wood and tried to warm his hands, but the flames were weak and the wood quickly burned down. To replenish the fire, he ripped down the velvet curtains so carefully installed by the upholsterer, tore them into strips and fed them to the fire. Gleefully he sat cross-legged in front of the blaze and inspected his work. But the curtains didn’t last long. Before long he had broken up the Hepple- white table and chairs and loaded them on to the burgeoning fire, and soon after that there was nothing left in the room to burn. As he stared into the flames, Pyke retrieved the bottle of laudanum from his pocket, removed the cork stopper and pressed it to his lips. He drank until the sickly clear tincture was gone.

It was dark and now he had burned the velvet curtains he could see outside to the square. The trees were bare and it had started to rain, little drops beating against the glass window. He stared into the darkness. Somewhere out there was Emily, pregnant with his child. And poor, frail little Felix. Settling himself by the fire again, he tried to get warm but the blaze had dwindled to nothing and he was soon shivering. Even the gin he drank on top of the laudanum failed to combat his shakes.

At ten, when he knew that sleep was beyond him, Pyke collected his greatcoat from the entrance hall and stepped out into the rain. The pavement in front of the house was wet and slippery from the fallen leaves. He walked briskly over to the other side of the square and then followed Berkeley Street to Piccadilly, where he crossed the road into Green Park. The park was deserted and the ground was marshy and sodden. In the dark sky, the yellow moon came and went behind clouds like a gargoyle. Pyke followed a track southwards towards Birdcage Walk, the outline of the new King’s Palace just about visible in the distance. From Green Park, he crossed over into St James’s Park and skirted around one end of the shallow lake. From there, he could see the army barracks, but when he finally reached Birdcage Walk there were no prostitutes or dolly mops idly patrolling the pavement in front of the barracks. The rain must have driven them indoors.

There was a solitary carriage parked about a hundred yards farther back along the walk, and when he looked around, he saw the door swing open and heard a voice through the rain. Later, Pyke would find out that Marguerite had been following him for much of the day and had shadowed him to Birdcage Walk from the house on Berkeley Square, but at the time he followed the voice as if in a trance. There was something familiar about it.