The Revenge of Captain Paine (34 page)

They walked back to Hyde Park Corner and ‘Rotten Row’, where, despite the foul conditions, men and women dressed in the finest clothes, attended to by liveried servants, rode up and down on magnificent groomed horses, as they had always done, past the Duke of Wellington’s Apsley House.

‘A few years ago, I wouldn’t have dared to show my face at a place like this one. I’m sure you were the same.’

Pyke shrugged. But it was true that, until recently, he’d had little need to visit the West End.

‘I used to think folk riding horses like those ones owned the city and everything in it. But you know what I think now?’

‘That it actually belongs to people like you and me.’

‘It’s what I’ve always liked about you,’ Villums said, beaming. ‘You always seem to know exactly what other people are thinking.’

 
After surveying the front page of
The Times
for houses to rent in the vicinity of the park, Pyke spent the rest of the morning sizing up the potential options. The one he liked best was, unsurprisingly, the most expensive, an enormous terraced property on Berkeley Square that rented for just under a thousand pounds a year and which contained within its walls the most extravagantly ornate marble staircase and domed ceiling he had ever seen. The agent who showed him the house, number forty-four on the west side of the square, explained that it was one of the finest eighteenth-century residences in the city, adding that the inside had been planned and designed by the renowned architect William Kent and that its ‘baroque theatricality’ perfectly matched the scale of the building. Pyke thought it looked a little like a Roman bordello but liked the fact that a house that looked quite normal from the outside contained so many architectural wonders within. For a start, the white marble staircase extended up through the full height of the building, almost up to the domed roof, which put him in mind of St Paul’s. There were also the marble columns on the first-floor mezzanine and the great chamber room with its panelled walls and hand-carved Italianate ceiling.

The agent informed him that the house was available immediately and, if he paid a deposit of a hundred pounds, he could move in right away. The remaining balance would be due within a month. The house was already furnished, too, which meant less expense for him. His plan was to take it and stay there just for a month. In the light of his financial problems, Pyke couldn’t justify spending a thousand pounds on rent, but if he managed to resolve matters and settle his dispute with Blackwood, and if they liked the house and the new location, then what was to stop it becoming a more permanent move? Pyke knew that Emily would take one look at it and dismiss it as too grand and indeed too large for their needs, but if she could see its advantages - its proximity to the city and to Hyde Park - she might be talked around. He told the agent he would have to think about it but in his own mind he had already decided to take it.

Even as he made this decision, Pyke knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep Emily and Felix locked up in the new house and that if someone really wanted to find them, they would find them: at Hambledon or a new domicile. More to the point, Emily would not be talked out of doing her work for ever. In the end, it would be easy for someone, someone like Trotter, to find and hurt her. It crossed his mind only afterwards that he’d used the present uncertainties to justify a move that he had wanted to make for a while. Still, he lingered for a while in Berkeley Square, looking up at the first-floor windows of number forty-four and trying to imagine the three of them, and possibly the little girl, Milly, setting up a new home within its walls. As Ned Villums had said, old barriers were beginning to crumble. Why shouldn’t a man like him live in such a residence?

 
Pyke hadn’t been inside the Spotted Dog on King Street in Holborn for a number of years, and walking into the taproom was like stepping back into his former life. Then it had been a meeting place for gamblers and petty thieves and, as one of the most feared Bow Street Runners in the capital, his presence had sent even the flashest of men scuttling for their boltholes. This time his entrance merited no more than a ripple of interest, and he made his way to the table at the back of the dark, smoky room where Julian Jackman was sipping from a pot of ale. The floor was covered with hay and a thick coating of butcher’s sawdust, and the gas lamps fixed to the walls produced a greasy, reddish flame that smelt almost as bad as the drying clothes of the men and women huddled around the blazing fire. For a while after he had quit as a Runner, he had missed the sensation of being feared in such establishments - it meant that people generally left him alone - but more recently he had warmed to the anonymity that his new role offered him and, anyway, he rarely had reason to visit low taverns any more.

It was the first time Pyke had seen Jackman since he had saved his life in a field outside Huntingdon. They shook hands, but not warmly - mutual suspicion still informed their dealings. Jackman looked older and more worn than Pyke remembered. His skin was pale and mottled and his red-rimmed eyes were supported by large black bags. When the potboy came, Jackman asked for another Perkins’ ale, Pyke ordering the same.

‘How long have you been back in the city?’ Pyke asked, even though he knew the answer already.

Jackman told him a week or two. Nodding, Pyke asked him about the situation in Huntingdon when he’d left.

‘Three of the navvies drowned in the Ouse. Another five are injured so badly they can’t walk and may never be able to work again.’

The pot-boy returned with their drinks. Pyke took a sip of ale and wiped the foam from his top lip with his tongue. ‘And what happened to the rest of the navvies?’

‘Someone authorised the use of troops to round them up and shut down the camp. A few men are still being held in the town’s gaol, most have been released and told never to set foot in the county again.’

Pyke considered telling Jackman about his own encounter with the dragoons but relented at the last minute, still not sure whether he could trust the man or not.

‘You think you know who it was?’ he asked instead.

‘I have an idea.’ Jackman looked up from his ale pot, one side of his face lit up by the greasy flame of the gas lamp. ‘You?’

‘You know a landowner called Rockingham?’

Jackman’s curt nod gave little else away. ‘What about him?’

‘He’s affiliated to the thirty-first regiment barracked near Huntingdon. So, too, was the magistrate you shot, Septimus Yellowplush, and an associate of Rockingham’s here in London called Jake Bolter. Is that name familiar to you?’

‘Bolter?’ Jackman scratched his chin and shook his head. ‘Can’t say it is.’ Taking a sip of ale, he added, ‘You think Rockingham planned the whole thing?’

‘He’s been campaigning against the railway crossing his land since the enterprise was first mooted.’ Pyke waited for a moment and said, ‘Now Morris is dead, it looks like his wish might be granted. No one on the committee seems very keen on the prospect of pushing on beyond Cambridge.’

‘Yes, I heard about that. Suicide, I read.’

His elbows on the table, Pyke leaned forward and whispered, ‘What if I told you I thought Morris was killed?’

‘Well, was he?’

‘Perhaps.’ Pyke took another slug of ale. ‘I think so.’

‘Any proof?’

Pyke thought about his suspicion about Bellows and the dealings between Bolter and Rockingham. ‘Not yet.’ He wiped his mouth and added, without altering his tone, ‘How about the name Jimmy Trotter?’

Jackman stared at him blankly. ‘What’s he supposed to have done?’

Briefly Pyke told him about Trotter’s role in inciting the navvies to violence but decided not to mention anything about the headless corpse and a possible link to letters stolen from Sir John Conroy.

‘Do you know where one might find this Jimmy Trotter?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Because when you do, I’d be interested in paying him a visit.’

‘You’ll have to get in line.’

That drew a thin smile. ‘You’re not a bad sort, for a capitalist.’

‘Tell me something, Jackman. What is it that you’re planning?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘It’s just that you don’t strike me as the kind of man who’s going to do nothing.’

The radical’s eyelids twitched. ‘The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union is planning another march through the capital. They’ve been gathering together signatures for a petition in support of the navvies for the past week.’

‘I take it from your tone that you don’t think much of their plans.’

Jackman shrugged. ‘Something happens, people’s first thought is to plan a march. It might look impressive on the day, thousands of folk filing through the streets, but what’s changed at the end of the day when it’s over and everyone goes home?’

‘So you’re planning a more lasting action?’

The radical stared down at the wooden table. ‘I’m presuming you’ve heard of Wat Tyler.’

‘He was hung in Bartholomew’s Field for his part in the Peasants’ Revolt.’

‘Tyler had the whole of the city within his grasp but he chose to negotiate with the King and his ministers. At first, they agreed to his demands; his army disbanded and went home. Then Tyler and his ringleaders were arrested, tried and put to death.’

‘It’s an interesting story,’ Pyke said, staring at the radical, trying to determine why he’d told it.

‘We’ve decided to call ourselves the Wat Tyler Brigade.’

‘Then let’s hope for your sake that you don’t end up like your namesake.’

‘It’s important to learn from history, from other people’s mistakes.’

‘Such as?’

‘Don’t negotiate, for a start.’

‘That’s a tough position to take. Politics is all about compromise.’

Jackman leaned forward across the table and whispered, ‘Did you learn that from Peel?’

‘Why do you say that?’ Pyke asked, the skin tightening across his face.

‘I heard you were close to the Tory leader,’ the radical said dismissively, as though the matter weren’t important.

‘From?’ Pyke turned the options over in his mind. Emily? She had no idea about their current arrangement and, anyway, she would never betray his confidence. Or would she?

Jackman tapped the end of his nose. ‘That would be telling, now, wouldn’t it?’

‘If you knew me better, you’d know I’m not one for playing games. If you’ve got something to say, say it.’

‘What if I were to tell you there’s a gentleman, here in London, who’s determined to wipe us out?’

‘I’d want to know more.’ Pyke waited for a moment. ‘I’d also want to know what you’re busy planning.’

‘Who said we’re planning something?’ Jackman’s eyes glistened. ‘Did Emily tell you that?’

Pyke finished his ale and put the pot down on the table. ‘I’ve told you I’m not one for playing games but let me give you a little warning, something to take to heart.’

Jackman’s eyes rose lazily to meet Pyke’s stare. ‘Oh?’

‘I know you saved my life and I owe you for that, but if Emily is hurt in any way because of her involvement in your affairs, I’ll come down on you so hard you’ll think what happened in Huntingdon was a gentle scolding.’

 
It was a chilly evening, with just a hint of coal dust in the raw air, but under starry skies, the promenade of the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall was already beginning to fill up with strollers. Under gas lamps and strings of lanterns symmetrically arranged in the bare branches of trees, the gardens looked immaculate, though in recent years the clientele had fallen with the entrance fee and now you were just as likely to see milliners and shop girls mixing with the elegantly attired ladies who paraded up and down the promenade in their silk dresses.

Most had escorts and wore their hair piled up in curls under wide-brimmed straw bonnets trimmed with different colours of silk ribbon.

Pyke saw Marguerite Morris strolling towards him from a distance, as though she had all the time in the world. It was hard not to notice the admiring and jealous glances of other people, for even in her mourning clothes she turned heads in a way that few women would be capable of. An elaborately darted black silk dress was drawn tightly around her waist to reveal her hourglass figure and cut low around the neck to show off her flesh.

Marguerite seemed oblivious to the attention and greeted Pyke with a flicker of her eyelashes.

Pyke had requested to meet her here, rather than at her house or the bank, because he hadn’t wanted to risk a meeting in private, but almost immediately he wondered about the wisdom of this decision: this was a place where lovers came to flirt and cavort away from the eyes of their parents and guardians.

‘Eddy’s will was read yesterday. His lawyer confirmed what I already knew. He left it all to me.’ As they walked, Marguerite threaded her arm through his, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do.

‘You don’t seem very excited about it.’ As they walked, Pyke thought about his conversation with Jackman and the radical’s offhand reference to someone who wanted to wipe out the Wat Tyler Brigade. Who had he been referring to, and why had he told Pyke about it? Was it some kind of warning?

‘Eddy wasn’t as wealthy as some might have imagined. He had money tied up in stocks and shares, mostly in the Grand Northern, and as you know he bought Cranborne Park ...’ Up close her breath smelled of stale wine.

‘Not something to be sniffed at.’

‘He owned it outright. But his lawyer told me that Eddy had recently requested the deeds to the estate and when I looked for them in his safe, I couldn’t find them.’

Pyke nodded, as though he appreciated the dilemma. ‘And without the deeds, the ownership of the estate can’t be transferred into your name.’

Marguerite’s body stiffened. ‘Don’t play games with me, Pyke. He gave the deeds to you, as security for the personal loan you told me you made to him.’