The Revenge of Captain Paine (46 page)

It was a cold, blustery morning and the ground was almost frozen. Having found a shovel and a pickaxe, Pyke retraced his steps to the spot where he had seen Marguerite and Jake Bolter that day and paced around the sodden field, trying to determine the exact place where the hole had been dug. There was no makeshift headstone or cross, but right in the middle of the field the grass was shorter and dirtier, and Pyke started to dig there. It was back-breaking work and at times he needed the pickaxe to break the frozen ground. After an hour of digging, the hole came up to his chest and a further half-hour after that, the tip of his shovel struck something hard. It took fifteen minutes to clear enough earth away in order to see what he’d found. The coffin was made of solid wood but by Pyke’s estimate it was only four feet in length. For a while, Pyke stood in the tiny annexe he had dug next to the coffin and thought about what he was about to do, how wrong it was to desecrate a grave.

Tentatively Pyke tied a handkerchief around his mouth and bent over, gripping the lid of the coffin with his fingers. He eased the lid upwards and, as he did so, a sulphurous whiff escaped from the coffin, its pungency almost inducing him to retch. Pulling the lid a little higher, he saw that the body was human rather than animal. A little boy. Pyke had to blink, to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks; he looked again and saw what seemed to be the body of his own son. This had been his first impression, but when the shock had finally subsided he saw the little differences. This boy was taller and broader than Felix, for a start. His face was fuller and his blond hair was less wispy. Nonetheless the likeness was startling, and for a while Pyke stood there staring down into the coffin, both appalled and relieved at the same time. It had been more than a month since he had watched, with Felix, the informal burial, and the corpse had started to decompose. Taking care to replace the lid, Pyke pulled himself out of the hole and, from there, began to shovel the earth back into the grave.

Perspiring, his thoughts remained with the dead boy. Whose lad was it? From what Marguerite had told him, James, their son, had died ten years ago, and this boy had seemed only a few months older than Felix.

So who was he and why did he bear an uncanny resemblance to Felix? And why had Jake Bolter rather than Morris mourned in this very field alongside Marguerite?

It took Pyke almost two hours to walk back across the fields to Hambledon, and as he approached the old hall from the driveway, he looked up and saw someone scampering to meet him.

Jo was red faced and out of breath by the time she reached him and, not bothering to try to speak, she thrust an official-looking letter into his hand. ‘This was discovered about half an hour ago by Royce. It wasn’t delivered with the rest of the post.’ Pyke had instructed Royce, who usually dealt with the mail, to pass all correspondence unopened to Jo, who would then open it to see whether it carried any news of Emily and Felix.

Jo was staring at the bruises on his face but was too polite, or well trained, to make a comment about them.

Hands shaking, Pyke took the letter and inspected it. There was a red wax seal on the back. Tearing the envelope open, he removed the note and briefly studied its contents.

‘Well?’ Jo asked, unable to contain herself. ‘I was about to open it when I saw you coming up the driveway.’

Too stunned to speak, Pyke folded the letter up, put it in his pocket and started to walk towards the house.

‘What does it say?’ Jo said, persisting. When Pyke didn’t answer her, she added, ‘I don’t know how they know but the whole house is talking about it. Royce, Jennings, Mary, everyone.’

Pyke turned to her, his face suddenly pink with anger. ‘Fuck them. Fuck the lot of them. Fuck them. They’re just worried about their jobs. Fuck them. They’ve always hated me, the lot of ’em.’ He looked up at the old hall and thought about its funereal atmosphere, the creaking floors and draughty rooms. His hands were shaking uncontrollably and a solitary tear trickled down his cheek. If he had his way, he’d torch the building with all of them locked up inside.

‘What’s the matter, Pyke? Is it bad news?’

Jo had been with Emily for almost ten years and was the only one of the staff who addressed them in such a casual manner.

Still in shock, he turned to her. ‘I’d say that Emily and Felix are alive.’ His hands were shaking from the relief.

‘Alive?’

He tapped the letter in his pocket. ‘They’ve been ransomed.’

‘Ransomed? For what?’ She hitched up her skirt and followed Pyke up the drive. ‘By whom?’

‘Not a word of this to any of the servants. Let ’em gossip all they like,’ Pyke said, walking briskly now.

Of all the people who might have had a reason to kidnap Emily and Felix, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, had been somewhere near the bottom of Pyke’s list. But the letter had been explicit. Pyke’s presence was demanded at Smithfield at dawn on Sunday, where he would give up certain correspondences in exchange for the safe return of his wife and child. Cumberland. Pyke thought about his recent visit to the hall and his ingratiating, unctuous manner. That left him just over two days to find the duke, the letters and perhaps Emily and Felix, too.

TWENTY-SIX

The Duke of Cumberland’s residence in Kew was a three-floor, red-brick Georgian mansion on the north side of the green, near the entrance to the botanical gardens. There was a shoulder-high wrought-iron fence running around the perimeter of the property but the gate was unlocked, and when Pyke presented himself at the front door, he was greeted by one of Cumberland’s servants and invited into the hall. Pyke didn’t have a plan beyond confronting the duke, by force if necessary, and wringing the truth out of him. Therefore he was taken aback when the servant informed him in a matter-of-fact voice that the duke had recently left for his family home on the Continent. The man explained that his master had caught an afternoon steamer from Deptford two days earlier and, if the sailing had been a smooth one, he would be docking in Hamburg some time later that evening. From there, the man added, it was a further two hundred miles across country to the duke’s home in Berlin. He gave Pyke this information freely and seemed bemused when Pyke asked him whether Cumberland had left the house in the company of an attractive woman and a small child. No, the servant assured him, the duke had left the house alone. Trying to hide his frustration, Pyke asked when Cumberland was due to return to London. The servant shrugged and said that his master was not expected back at the house until the New Year. Pyke didn’t say anything else to the man but wondered how the duke planned to oversee the exchange of Conroy’s letters for Emily and Felix from the Continent. If the letters had been important enough to kidnap Emily and Felix, why had Cumberland opted to travel to Berlin rather than remain in London for a few extra days?

Pyke was perturbed by this turn of events but didn’t believe the servant was lying. In the drawing room and billiards room, maids were covering the furniture with sheets, as though preparing for the duke’s lengthy absence. Fired up by his frustration, Pyke briefly thought about forcing his way into the rest of the house to check for signs of Emily and Felix, but he knew that if he did the servant would call for help, and instinct told him that he wouldn’t find anything.

What if Cumberland had told his servants he was leaving for the Continent but, in fact, was holed up somewhere in London waiting for the letters?

But when Pyke enquired after Cumberland at his apartments in St James’s Palace, he was told exactly the same thing: the duke had left two days earlier for Berlin and wasn’t expected back in England until the New Year. There, too, the housemaids appeared to be preparing the rooms for a lengthy hiatus, and while Pyke felt like ramming the barrel of his pistol down the footman’s throat, he knew it wouldn’t achieve anything. The man didn’t appear to be covering up for the duke or, indeed, seem to know anything about Emily and Felix and their possible whereabouts.

Pyke had reached another dead end and, as he trudged despondently back to his carriage, he turned over what he had found out in his mind, trying to figure out whether he had missed something important.

Perhaps Cumberland had entrusted someone else with the task of bringing Emily and Felix to Smithfield at dawn on Sunday. In which case Emily and Felix were being held somewhere in the capital and Cumberland’s apparent return to Berlin was some kind of diversionary tactic. A visit to the Admiralty in St James’s confirmed what Pyke already knew: that the journey from Dover to Calais and on to Berlin via Brussels and Cologne would take a minimum of three days. When Pyke had first heard that Cumberland had fled to the Continent, he had briefly considered pursuing him, but if he did so, he would miss the rendezvous at Smithfield on Sunday. Quickly he ruled out this option. He could always make the long journey to Berlin if, or when, nothing came of his encounter at Smithfield.

It was four in the afternoon on Thursday and the autumnal light was already fading. It hadn’t snowed but the temperature was hovering just above or below freezing, and men wearing warm coats and stovepipe hats hurried out of buildings to their waiting carriages. The once gleaming Portland stone of the Admiralty building had new turned a dirty, yellow colour, and farther along Whitehall the grand buildings of state - the Houses of Parliament, Downing Street, the King’s Palace and the new clubs of Pall Mall, where politicians and their peers socialised with their own - stood impervious against the shrill winds gusting off the river. But Pyke wasn’t concerned by the sudden cold snap. With his hands in his pockets, he wandered along Whitehall, turning over what he had learnt and wondering whether Cumberland really had kidnapped his wife and child. Certainly, if he believed, as he seemed to, that Pyke had come into possession of Conroy’s letters, he had a sufficient motive, and the letter delivered to Hambledon undoubtedly bore the duke’s private seal, which would have been impossible to forge and which therefore confirmed the duke’s culpability.

In his recent visit to Hambledon, Cumberland had told Pyke that he was about to leave for the Continent. But why had he decided to make this journey if the prospect of laying his hands on Conroy’s letters loomed on his immediate horizon? And another more worrying question niggled at Pyke’s mind. Why had it taken Cumberland a full five days since the abduction to issue the ransom demand? Why hadn’t he delivered it the morning after the kidnapping?

With these questions foremost in his thoughts, Pyke crossed the city in a hackney carriage and asked the driver to wait while he got out on the New Road just past Euston Square. It was nearly dark and the air was bitingly cold. This was where Peel had said Sir Henry Bellows had bought a number of properties in the past year. Digging his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat, he crossed the road, narrowly avoiding an omnibus weighed down with passengers, inside and out, and started to walk towards a deserted construction site a few hundred yards farther along the thoroughfare. Pyke had read about the arch that was under construction. The Grand Doric portico was being built to mark the terminus of the London-to-Birmingham railway.
Gore’s railway
. Pyke felt a sudden queasiness in his stomach. Was it a coincidence that Bellows had bought land and properties in the vicinity of the London terminus of the Birmingham railway? For that matter, could he take Peel’s word at face value? Was it true that Bellows had made these investments in the first place, and if so why had Peel wanted Pyke to know about them? Was there, as Gore had seemed to suggest, some kind of bad blood between him and the Tory leader?

Number forty-four Berkeley Square was like an ice house when Pyke unlocked the door, but he had to wait only a few minutes before a hackney carriage dropped Townsend off. Pyke suggested they walk briskly around the square to keep warm, rather than trying to get comfortable in the house. Townsend agreed, but after just a few paces he seemed a little breathless. Pyke asked him whether he was all right. ‘I’m just coming down with a chill,’ Townsend assured him.

As they walked Pyke said, ‘Have you put that personal advertisement in
The Times
yet?’

‘This has been running all week.’ Townsend took out a copy of the newspaper and directed Pyke’s attention to a box about halfway up the front page on the left-hand side. It read: ‘
Wanted: rare and valuable gold watches from the last century for collectors. Top prices paid. Bentley’s Jewellers, thirty-seven, the Strand
.’

Pyke handed it back to Townsend. ‘Any responses?’

‘None that would interest you. At least not yet.’

Pyke nodded. It would have to do for now. ‘I want you to gather twenty men, or as many as you can round up at short notice, and have them assemble in the Old Red Lion near Smithfield on Saturday night.’

‘What kind of men?’

‘The kind who know how to fire a rifle and won’t ask too many questions, so long as the price is right.’

‘And how right will the price be?’ Townsend stopped and turned to face Pyke.

‘Ten pounds a man,’ Pyke said, without thinking about it. ‘But I need men who’ve fired a rifle before. Ex-soldiers, if possible. And I need you to keep them sober for me.’

Townsend whistled. ‘Ten pounds ought to do it.’ He blew into his hands and said, ‘There was someone looking for you earlier. A young fellow, William something. I didn’t catch his surname. He said he had news about a man called Jackman.’

Pyke’s throat tightened. ‘Did he say where I could find him?’

‘He told me to tell you he’d be drinking at the Queen’s Head in Battle Bridge until about nine.’

 
It was a miserable night: very dark, very cold and very muddy, and a blanket of fog had fallen on the capital. Even the occasional gas lamp did little to illuminate the street and make it easy to see where they were going. They left the road and cut through some carpet-beating grounds and vegetable patches left derelict by the building work, as Pyke followed William Hancock down a steep, treacherous path into the giant man-made ravine created by the railway construction work. As Hancock explained, when it was completed, a vast, stationary steam engine would pull the trains up the steep hill from the railway’s terminus at Euston Square to join up with the railway line at Camden Town. In fact, Hancock had said little to him in the pub: only that he had been instructed to show Pyke something. He wouldn’t say what it was and he seemed nervous, on edge. Now, half an hour later, Pyke wondered about the wisdom of following a man he’d never met before into the bowels of a deserted construction site. Their descent was slow-going, not helped by the ankle-deep mud and the dense wall of fog that made it hard to see more than a few yards in front. After perhaps fifteen minutes of painstaking progress, on their hands and backsides at times, the ground levelled out and he guessed they must have reached the floor of the construction site. He looked back up the slope but couldn’t see a thing. The fog was at its thickest at the very bottom of the ravine, a swirling, freezing blanket of white that made it hard for Pyke to see his own hands, let alone follow Hancock. They stayed close to each other and Hancock skilfully negotiated a path through piles of brick rubble and lengths of iron rails. Finally they came to a halt by a tall stack of wooden sleepers, Hancock turning to him and whispering, ‘Jackman told me to find you, if something happened to him.’ In the fog and the darkness, Pyke couldn’t properly see his expression but his voice sounded feathery and nervous.