The Last Days (38 page)

Pyke studied her expression. ‘Did Emily instruct you to inform me of this meeting?’

‘Not in so many words.’ Jo stared up at the ceiling of the church. ‘But I know how unhappy she is at the prospect of it.’

Pyke assessed her seemingly well-intentioned concern. ‘Perhaps I may ask another question?’

Jo gave him an unsettled look.

‘Have you heard of Edmonton’s threats to disinherit her? Or, indeed, to quadruple her allowance, should she agree to marry this man?’

‘I have not heard such a conversation for myself but my mistress has informed me of certain matters.’

‘And you think this is why Emily is considering the claims of this suitor?’

‘In part.’

‘Only in part?’

‘Mr . . .’ Jo hesitated. ‘Sorry . . . Pyke.’ She looked at him and smiled. ‘I overheard a conversation at Hambledon between Lord Edmonton and his lawyer. I haven’t yet told my mistress what I learned but I presume that she is aware of what they talked about.’

Pyke nodded at her to continue.

‘As far as I understand it, Lord Edmonton has not simply threatened to disinherit my mistress, should she refuse to countenance this marriage. He has also instructed his lawyer to draw up a codicil to his will. From what I could gather from their conversation, the codicil states that if, at any point following Lord Edmonton’s death and the death of any of my mistress’s future husbands, she should marry you, then she would forfeit any claim to her inheritance and the family estate.’

‘I am to be personally named in this new document?’

‘As I understand it.’ Her manner was almost apologetic.

So it was a choice between him and the money, Pyke thought bitterly. The fat lord was indeed a formidable adversary.

‘And how can I contact Emily, should I need to,’ Pyke asked, ‘if she’s to be kept locked up in her quarters?’

Jo told him Emily would make arrangements to contact him.

‘Where? Here?’

Jo shrugged and said she did not know.

‘Here,’ he said, scribbling his uncle’s address down on a scrap of paper. ‘Should Emily need to get in touch.’ Pyke waited for a moment. ‘Thank you for making the journey from Hambledon.’

This time, Jo could not bring herself to look at him. ‘I just want what is best for my mistress.’ She fidgeted, shifting her body weight awkwardly from foot to foot.

‘But I have yet another reason to be grateful to you in particular.’

This time Jo neither answered him nor even looked at him. He approached her, smiling.

‘Do you know what I’m referring to?’

‘No.’

‘The occasion you warned me about the assault in the Blue Dog tavern.’ As Jo tried to leave, he grabbed her wrist. ‘Well?’

She stared at him like a trapped rabbit but managed to mutter, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You shouted my name. I presume to warn me.’ He tightened his hold on her wrist. ‘But I cannot for the life of me work out why you might have been following me in the first place.’

‘I have never even been to that place.’ She grimaced, struggling in vain to free herself from Pyke’s grip.

‘You concealed your face well under the bonnet. But it was your voice that gave you away.’

‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken, sir.’

‘Am I?’ Pyke let go of her wrist, aware that he had perhaps bruised her, and watched as she gathered up her skirt and hurried from the church.

TWENTY-THREE

S
ir Richard Fox disembarked from his private carriage and was hurrying towards the entrance to number five Bow Street when Pyke caught up with him. Pyke was dressed as a beggar and Fox did not recognise him until he said, ‘Don’t look at me, Sir Richard. Just keep on walking, as though you have somewhere else to go.’

Rigid as a washboard, Fox did as he was told. Though Pyke could not be certain, it struck him that Fox may have been frightened.

Thirty yards past the Bow Street offices, they came to a halt. Pyke looked around, to make sure that no one had followed them. The street was thronging with the usual traffic of carriages, carts and traders.

‘The addresses,’ he said, not bothering with any formalities.

Fox looked around him, as though searching for assistance. ‘I told you yesterday, Pyke. Vines is away at the moment.’

‘His address.’

‘It’s somewhere in the office, if you want to come in with me and wait . . .’ He smoothed his moustache.

‘Tilling’s, then.’

‘Ah, yes, I managed to find that one for you.’ He reached into his jacket, pulled out his wallet, removed a scrap of paper and thrust it into Pyke’s outstretched hand.

Pyke read what was on the scrap, stuffed it into his own pocket and said, ‘I’ll be back for Vines’s address.’

Pyke was already five yards along the street, disappearing into the crowd, when he heard Fox shout, ‘Pyke.’

It was an innocent mistake, or so Pyke believed - uttering the name of an old friend or acquaintance, as one might do under normal circumstances. But its consequences were startling. At first, other passers-by seemed not to have heard Fox’s mistake, or at least did not outwardly respond to it. Pyke pulled the cap down over his face and walked briskly in the direction of Covent Garden market, trying not to draw attention to himself. But after a few moments, the impact of this public utterance of his name percolated into the minds of those who had heard it, a few looked at him and finally one shouted, ‘That’s Pyke.’ The effect of these words was astonishing. Perhaps it was simply the reward money: five hundred pounds was a monumental, almost unheard-of, sum, and suddenly everyone on Bow Street could taste a share of it. Another voice shouted, ‘That’s Pyke, that is.’ Still another, ‘Someone stop ’im.’ It was possible his name electrified those who heard it for different reasons: some may have been afraid, others wanted to see him hang. In the end, the effect was the same: suddenly he was a marked man and others joined the hunt. ‘Is that ’im?’ one asked. Another said, ‘He’s got a pistol.’ Still another said, ‘Just kill him. They’ll pay up for a corpse too.’

Pyke darted into a side street and broke into a run. Doing so may have been a mistake: it unnecessarily drew attention to him. But he could not help it. He needed to put as much distance between himself and his pursuers as possible. That was his ambition, but alerted to his presence by shouts from behind, others were spilling out of dilapidated buildings almost at the same moment as he was passing them. Turning into an even smaller alleyway, he pushed his way past a newsboy. From behind, someone tried to grab his shoulder; he pulled himself free and ducked into a dingy entrance. Shouts followed. It was a pawnshop: there were racks of shawls, petticoats, skirts, stays, gowns, shirt-fronts, handkerchiefs and trousers. Ignoring the owner, he barged his way through the shop, knocking over piles of clothes as he did so. He kicked down the back door, and found himself in a small courtyard, surrounded by buildings. A fighting dog, chained to its kennel, sprang to its feet and growled at him through bared teeth. Pyke took no notice of it and forced his way into another building on the other side of the court. He could still hear voices behind him. This time he found himself in the kitchen of a lodging house: a fire was blazing in the grate, rashers of bacon suspended before it. Around a table sat seven or eight men dressed in working clothes. No one made any effort to block his path. As he left the lodging house, this time by the front entrance, he could not see any sign of his pursuers. Across the alleyway, he entered another lodging house, this one more run down, and pushed his way through to the back of the building, where he found himself in an identical courtyard. This time, however, he hesitated for a moment and looked behind him.

No one seemed to have followed him.

It was dark and quiet in the yard. Above him rain fell lightly out of a desolate sky. Pyke kept moving deeper and deeper into the rookery. If he had stopped to think about it, he might have likened himself to a hunted animal, but such was his fear, and his desire to evade capture, that he did not once pause to consider his predicament. Perhaps his nerves were dulled by the laudanum. In any case, he felt oddly calm by the time he finally came to a halt, in an empty skittle yard attached to a beer shop. At first he just chuckled, but very soon this had mutated into a deep belly-laugh and finally into uncontrolled hysteria. He laughed because he was not yet dead.

 

From the bay window in Fitzroy Tilling’s front room, the view took in Hampstead Heath and extended far beyond to the sprawling metropolis, which spilled out in every direction. A blanket of fog clung to the city’s smoke-blackened buildings, and the sun was barely visible through the murkiness.

From a cursory inspection, Pyke concluded that it was a masculine environment and, as such, was appropriately anonymous. There were no personal effects in the rooms and few decorative features. The ground floor comprised a front and a back room, in addition to the small - and from what Pyke could tell unused - kitchen in the basement. The rooms were furnished with dingy Turkey carpets and an assortment of old-fashioned tables and chairs. Above the fireplace in the front room sat two old-fashioned silver candlesticks, but otherwise the furnishings were sparse and utilitarian.

Pyke had inserted a thin metal instrument between the sash windows at the back of the house and undone the catch.

While he waited for Tilling to return, he perused the books lining the walls of the back room. He was surprised at the overlap with his own interests, but whereas he was self-educated and could read the works of Machiavelli or Descartes only in translation, Tilling had their original works in Italian and French.

Tilling finally arrived home shortly after seven in the evening. He was dressed in the same jacket and trousers as he had worn the previous time they had met in the basement of Whitehall. Beneath the jacket, his white linen shirt glowed against dark skin. His gaze swept the room, his bug-like eyes pulled close together with worry, as though he sensed that something was amiss even before he spotted Pyke sitting on one of his horsehair chairs in the front room.

Tilling did not seem unduly concerned or surprised by Pyke’s presence in his home, though on closer inspection his tar-black hair, which had seemed greasy at first, was slick with perspiration.

‘I fancied it would only be a matter of time before you tried to make contact,’ Tilling said, entering the small front room. Walking towards a cupboard at the back of the room, he asked Pyke whether he wanted a drink.

Tilling poured them both a brandy. At the last minute, Pyke took the glass Tilling was about to drink from.

Tilling smiled at the switch. ‘After all that’s happened, I can understand why you might be nervous.’ His smile became a smirk. ‘That’s quite a trail of destruction you have left behind. Governor Hunt and John Arnold. And now I read about arson attacks and rioting on land owned by Edmonton. You’re a veritable one-man Armageddon.’ He held up his glass and said, ‘To your health.’ He looked at Pyke and smiled. ‘So tell me something. Have you got a particular problem with authority figures or do you just like killing them?’

‘It would depend on the authority figure in question.’ He regarded Tilling with a dispassionate stare. ‘Why is Peel nervous?’ He felt tired and washed out from the laudanum he had taken the previous night, and bloated from the pastries and sweet cakes he’d consumed that morning.

‘Should he be?’

‘That’s what I’m here to find out.’

‘Holding a gun to the Home Secretary’s head with half of London looking for you.’ Tilling raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘I’m a little impressed.’

‘Only a little?’

‘I’m impressed you haven’t been captured.’ Tilling smiled. ‘You’re the most wanted man in the country.’

Pyke took a sip of brandy. ‘I didn’t get the impression you were on particularly friendly terms with John Arnold.’ The fiery liquid did little to settle his stomach.

‘I wasn’t.’ Tilling shrugged. ‘I couldn’t stand any of the Orange Order. Neither could Peel, despite the nickname O’Connell gave him. Still, aside from his bluster, Arnold wasn’t the worst of them.’

Pyke watched his expression carefully. ‘You’re sorry to see him dead?’

‘Not really.’ Tilling shrugged.

‘But when you were stationed in Ulster, you agreed to assist the man, didn’t you? On his request, you rode to Armagh and recruited a brawny Protestant thug into the Irish Constabulary.’

‘It’s the way political business is conducted, Pyke. As I remember, Peel required the order’s assistance in some matter.’

‘So you went to Loughgall and told Davy Magennis the new Irish Constabulary needed good strong Protestant men like him.’

‘I can’t remember exactly what I said to him.’

‘But you washed your hands of him quick enough, when he nearly beat a Catholic man to death in front of a thousand witnesses.’

‘No, in fact I was keen to prosecute him, but I was told such a practice wasn’t conducive to the long-term stability of the Union. As it was explained to me, how could I punish a young lad from an upstanding Orange family for simply doing what came naturally to him?’

Tilling shrugged and looked down, as a ginger cat with white paws strolled into the room and jumped up on to his lap. He shrugged. ‘The cat must have got in through the window you left open.’ He patted the purring animal on his head. ‘He sometimes comes to visit me.’ Tilling looked at him. ‘We did what we could. We dismissed him from the force.’

Pyke allowed himself a weak smile. ‘I’m gratified to know that your conscience is clear.’

‘And it makes me feel a whole lot better to know that you approve.’

Pyke ignored his sarcasm. ‘And this was the last you heard of him?’

Tilling nodded. ‘Until you came to see me in March and dangled his name in front of me.’

‘You did a reasonable job of hiding your concern.’