The Last Days (10 page)

Even Pyke, who was used to the harshness of the city, was weary from his exertions, from walking its unforgiving streets and smelling its noxious smells: the grim odours of its wet pavements, the stench of the river at low tide, the tanneries where human excrement was used as an astringent, and the ubiquitous smells of horse dung, animal sweat, fried meat, rotten fruit and discarded herring bones.

Over lunch purchased from a street vendor, a hot meat pie dripping with warm gravy, he had watched as two men, one dressed as a Protestant minister, staged a ‘conversion’ play for the unwary crowd. The minister said a few prayers and sang a hymn and the other man rose up and started to spit on some rosary beads and an effigy of the Pope. Apart from Pyke, everyone in the crowd applauded wildly. The minister passed round a collection plate. Once the crowd had dispersed, the two men tipped the coins into one of their hats and disappeared into a nearby tavern.

During the day, Pyke visited countless taverns and brothels, asking for Mary Johnson and spreading the news about the reward money. He had narrowly avoided being attacked with a broken glass in the Black Horse on Tottenham Court Road and had come close to breaking the neck of a young thief who had tried to pick his pocket outside a brothel on the corner of Church Street and Lawrence Street in the heart of the rookery.

He had also suffered the stares of ordinary men and women in most of the taverns that he had visited. These were his people and yet they were as strange to him as a South Sea islander or an African pygmy.

The Rose tavern on Rose Street in Covent Garden had, during the last years of the previous century, hosted posture molls who stripped naked while standing on overturned crates. These activities still happened, though on a more informal basis, but the tavern’s main business was straight-down-the-line prostitution. Upstairs, the madam, Polly Masters, an ugly woman with no front teeth and thick black hair sprouting from her bulbous nose, greeted Pyke with measured enthusiasm.

‘The word’s already got out that you’re willing to pay twenty pounds to anyone who can deliver this Paddy lass, Mary Johnson.’

‘Do you know her?’

As she shrugged, she afforded Pyke a glimpse of her cleavage. ‘Maybe.’

Pyke paid no attention to it. ‘Did she work here?’ ‘Might have done, I couldn’t rightly say.’

‘Twenty pounds is a lot of money, Polly.’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’ She adjusted her dress to conceal her bosoms. ‘A few of my gals could earn as much in, say, a month.’

‘Was Mary Johnson one of them?’

She met his stare. ‘Could’ve been but she was a flighty one, that one. Her ’eart was never in it. Sweet lass, pretty, popular with the gen’lemen.’

Pyke asked Polly to describe Mary and she gave him a description that fitted with the one they had been given by Mary’s neighbour. Polly shrugged. ‘Haven’t seen her for a while, I’m afraid.’

‘Do you know where I might find her?’

‘What’s in it for you, Pyke? I mean, from what I can see, there’re plenty of tarts in the city, more ’n enough to go round.’

‘If you have anything worth telling me, you can leave a message at Lizzie’s place, next to Smithfield.’

She gave him an amused look. ‘Is it true love, then? You and Lizzie Morgan?’

He turned to leave.

‘That lass, Mary, she came and went as she pleased. Not the kind of girl I much care for. Two days ago, when I weren’t ’round, Mary crept in ’ere and cleared what little she had out of her room and scarpered. Vanished into thin air.’

This made Pyke turn around. ‘You say this happened two days ago?’

‘One of the gals might know where she went. And if I manage to dig it out of ’em, you’ll be ’earing from me, Pyke. Keep that money for me. I’ll want it paid in legal notes, too.’

Because it seemed to be a solid lead, Pyke said that if he managed to locate Mary Johnson as a result of her information, he would pay her fifty pounds.

Downstairs in the taproom, a man that Pyke recognised but whose face he could not place lunged towards him through a crowd of drunken bodies. Pyke stepped to one side with ease and the knife that the man had been carrying sank deep into the flabby midriff of someone standing next to him. Pyke cocked his elbow back and punched it into the helpless face of his attacker, heard the bone in his nose crumple, and watched as the man careened sideways and sprawled on to the wet floor, taking down a dozen grown men as though they weren’t any more substantial than a set of wooden skittles.

 

Godfrey Bond’s publishing business, if it could be called that, was located in the basement of a building in St Paul’s Yard, number seventy-two, which had once been home to the renowned publisher Joseph Johnson. Now, though, despite its proximity to Wren’s great cathedral with its magnificent dome, the neighbourhood was an uninspiring one and, in recent years, had lost what little sheen remained, as pawnshops and lodging houses took over from more respectable businesses. Before long, his uncle often said, with amusement, the whole area would be awash with taverns, chop houses and slop shops.

Pyke found his uncle hunched over a manuscript in the back of the shop. Around him were piles upon piles of messily stacked books, pamphlets, papers and newspapers.

Godfrey looked up, saw it was Pyke and said he’d hoped it might have been a choirboy from the cathedral, lost and wanting his help. ‘If it isn’t enough I’ve got people sniping about the integrity of what I publish, I’ve also had word back from the pedlars who hawk my penny dreadfuls that readers think the stuff is boring and not nearly salacious enough. Meanwhile, I’m only too aware that what I’ve been putting out of late has been unoriginal, but there are quite simply no new stories, no one stimulating enough to write about. Defoe had Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard. Who have I got?’ His uncle gave him a calculating look. ‘Of course, if you were to agree to—’

Pyke cut him off. ‘No, Godfrey. You know what I think about that.’

‘Folk are bored with material like Life in London. They want the real thing. That’s why Vidocq’s memoirs are selling so well. They’re calling him the first detective.’

‘People like Vidocq because he’s a rogue.’

‘Exactly, dear boy.’ Godfrey smiled. ‘You wouldn’t have to write it yourself. I’d get a proper writer, not one of those horrible balladeers. You wouldn’t have to write the damn thing or even put your own name to it.’

‘I value anonymity.’

‘Ha, that’s why you walk into any tavern in the city and people sink into their seats or crawl up the walls.’

‘I don’t want my life becoming public property.’

‘It’s not as if I’d expect you to tell me the truth, dear boy. My readers don’t give a damn about the truth. They just want a good story with someone they can cheer for. We could even make you look good.’ He glanced at Pyke and shrugged. ‘Or bad, if you wanted to be bad. Good or bad. Just not both at the same time. It confuses people. They can’t work out whether to shout for the man or rail against him.’

‘You know what my answer’s going to be. I don’t know why you bother to ask . . .’

Godfrey nodded glumly. ‘It gives you some indication of how bad things are.’ He went to fill his glass from the jug but noticed it was empty. ‘I assume you’ve read about the murders in St Giles? It’s an awful business, I know, but if I could somehow get my hands on that story, well, it would sell like hot pies. Times like this, people need answers and explanations. You should’ve heard some of the preposterous tales that folk are spinning. One lad thought it was King Herod, returning to finish the job, another reckoned it was the vengeful ghost of Queen Caroline. These weren’t the brightest minds, you’ll understand.’

Pyke thought about not telling his uncle about his involvement in the events of the previous few days, beginning with the discovery of the bodies, fearing it might lead to a torrent of unwanted questions. But Godfrey would hear about it sooner or later and Pyke decided the news would be better coming from him.

To his surprise, though, the first thing that his uncle did, once he had been told the whole story, was to touch Pyke gently on the knee, look him in the eye and ask how he was bearing up.

Pyke had always felt it necessary to guard against his uncle’s attempts to solicit favours from him. Yet as he looked into Godfrey’s guileless eyes, he couldn’t help but feel moved by the concern in them. Pyke started to open his mouth, but the extent to which recent events had unsettled him suddenly made him feel weak and the words wouldn’t come. He thanked Godfrey for his concern and assured him everything would be fine.

Godfrey shrugged as though he did not believe Pyke. ‘That other business you were asking about. You know.

Lord Edmonton. I did a little digging.’

In the strains of the past few days, Pyke had almost forgotten about Edmonton and the robberies. He made a mental note not to overlook Swift and the question of what had taken him to the St Giles lodging house in the first place.

‘It would appear that Edmonton’s estate is in some trouble. The usual thing: the cost of maintenance outstripping the yield from rents. You mentioned his brother William, the banker. My source claimed that the brother’s bank has been propping up Edmonton’s estate for a while and keeping the lord himself in clover. He hadn’t heard anything about the robberies, though. I’m afraid I can’t help you there.’

Pyke thought about Hambledon Hall, Edmonton’s shabby country estate, and about the strange act he’d witnessed, the two brothers openly bickering in front of him, Edmonton silencing his apparently weaker sibling.

‘For what it’s worth, I also heard that Edmonton is tight with the King’s brother, the Duke of Cumberland. Damn nasty piece of work, that one. I’d be wary of anyone who claimed him as a friend.’ Godfrey proceeded to regale Pyke with stories that he had already heard. Apparently Cumberland had once raped Lady Lyndhurst; he had also driven Lord Graves to suicide, possibly raped his own sister and, on one occasion, having received a blow on the head in the middle of the night from his valet in a botched assassination attempt, Cumberland had, according to some accounts, slit the man’s throat and then convinced the authorities his valet had committed suicide. Godfrey also repeated rumours to the effect that Cumberland was engaged in a dastardly plot to poison the young Princess Victoria in order to steal the crown for himself and safeguard the Protestant ascendancy.

Godfrey pulled down his wine-stained shirt to cover his girth. ‘You also asked about the mother.’ He watched Pyke suspiciously. ‘And the daughter.’

Pyke nodded but said nothing.

‘The daughter, Emily, is an acquaintance of Elizabeth Fry. She’s a committed reformer or an interfering do-gooder, depending on your point of view. They visit prisons, asylums and even factories, and write reports as a way of pressuring the authorities to improve conditions. Most of ’em are your wearisome God-bothering types, motivated by the usual nonsense about bringing the poor to the Lord, as though prayer and a few homilies about the Almighty will put food in their stomachs. Apparently this one doesn’t do the work for the glory of God. I asked Reverend Foote about her. As the Ordinary, he knows her quite well. He doesn’t much care for the reforming type but he told me something you might find interesting. Edmonton is not the kind of man who would readily allow his only unmarried daughter even the tiniest smidgen of freedom or the financial support to carry out work he, no doubt, regards as unbecoming.’

Pyke affected a frown. ‘What are you telling me?’

‘Well,’ Godfrey said, enjoying himself, ‘at the time of their marriage, control of the Hambledon estate, as the law demands, passed from wife to husband, but I’m told that the marriage settlement included a number of unusual provisions. A certain sum of money was settled on their future offspring by trust. I don’t know if the wife had doubts about Edmonton’s character even then but, at the time, he wasn’t in any position to dictate terms. You see, Lord Edmonton was by no means a member of the landed gentry in those days. He was only titled as a result of his connections with Tories like Eldon and Winchelsea.’ Godfrey tapped his nose. ‘The old man, it would appear, has little power to prevent his daughter from doing what she damn well likes with her income and, I’m told, it’s driven him nearly to the point of apoplexy she has chosen to use it in the manner she has.’

Pyke thought about Emily Blackwood and the violent argument with her father he had overheard. But he was also preoccupied by something else, something that had been on his mind for the entire day, something that related to the living arrangements of the deceased and their missing cousin.

First thing in the morning, he would pay a visit to number four Whitehall Place and examine what had been removed from the lodging house.

SEVEN

B
ut the following morning, Pyke found himself standing outside the entrance to Newgate prison, waiting for Emily Blackwood to finish a conversation she was having with the Reverend Arthur Foote. Though he had walked past the prison, just a short distance from his gin palace, on numerous occasions since his visit to Hambledon Hall, this was the first time he had come across Emily. Pyke stared up at the building’s blackened stone-clad exterior.

There were other prisons in London but Newgate remained the most notorious. In the past, Pyke had visited the interior of the prison, mostly in order to elicit information from convicts, and found it to be a depressing but unremarkable place. Others, however, did not share his ambivalence. To them, the prison would always represent a system of justice that was as brutal as it was unfair.

They were standing almost directly outside Debtors’ Door, from where condemned men and women emerged on the day of their execution and began their last journey to the scaffold. Pyke watched Foote shuffle across the street in the direction of the King of Denmark pub, a cabman’s watering hole that occupied a three-storey tenement building directly opposite the prison.