Bloody Winter: A Pyke Mystery

by Andrew Pepper

  ‘He wanted me to give you this.’ Hastings took a letter from his desk and handed it to Knox.

  While Knox opened the letter, Hastings said, ‘A special coroner’s inquest was held yesterday afternoon. The deceased’s name was officially recorded. A verdict of murder by a person or persons unknown was entered.’

  Hands trembling, Knox read the short missive. It thanked Knox for his diligence and hard work but pointed out that it would not be in the public interest to pursue the inquiry any further.

  ‘Did he go to Dundrum and pay Lord Cornwallis a visit?’

  Hastings affected a look of indifference. ‘Yes, I believe he did. What’s that got to do with anything?’

  How had Cornwallis convinced Pierce to drop the investigation? Knox wondered. A threat perhaps? Or a bribe? The aristocrat had connections in London. He could help a man like Pierce. In any case it didn’t matter. Knox had missed his chance. The letter made no reference to the precariousness of his situation.

  It would not be in the public interest. Anger replaced consternation. Who determined what was, and wasn’t, in the public interest?

  Hastings strode across to the door and opened it. ‘You don’t imagine that your old position has been kept open, do you?’

  Knox was too dumbfounded to answer. When he reached the top of the stairs, he heard Hastings say, ‘Good day, Mr Knox.’

  His future had been decided in a matter of minutes. They hadn’t regarded him as a threat. Once again they had taken his home and his job and now they were slamming the door in his face.

  From Cashel, Knox had to walk as far as Pubblehill, about five miles, before he got a lift. Knox sat listlessly next to the driver, a wire-maker, hardly able to talk, too stunned by what had happened, another reversal of fortune. He sat there, arms around his knees, thinking about a decision he’d already made. It was time to confront Moore in person, find out once and for all what he knew about the dead man, about the murder, and why he’d tried so hard to bury the whole matter.

  The wire-maker dropped him on the High Street and Knox walked the remaining few yards to the Anglican church. There was no Catholic church in the village. Moore had seen to that.

  The church was locked but Knox found the vicar tending to one of the graves in the yard. He was a middle-aged man with a stern face, ink-black hair, deeply inset eyes and a striking Napoleonic nose.

  ‘I wonder if you could help me. I’m looking for my birth certificate.’ Knox waited for the vicar to stand up.

  ‘And you are, sir?’

  ‘John Johns.’ Knox had heard from his mother that the vicar was relatively new in the parish. Knox had never met him before and he wouldn’t have known about Johns. Or indeed Johns’ mother and father, both of whom were long deceased.

  ‘Gordon Marks.’ He offered his hand and waited for Knox to shake it.

  Knox did so. ‘Do you keep the records here?’

  ‘It depends how far back you want to go.’ Marks rubbed the dirt from his palms. Then he realised that he’d made Knox shake his muddy hand. ‘Sorry about that.’

  Knox indicated it was quite all right. ‘1806. March.’

  ‘They might go back that far.’ Marks looked at him. ‘So you were born in the parish?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Perhaps I know your family?’

  ‘My mother and father are both dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Where did they live?’

  Knox didn’t want to say the lodge-house as that might alert the vicar’s suspicions. ‘A cabin on Castle Field.’

  ‘And when did they pass away?’

  ‘Ten years ago.’

  The vicar rubbed his jaw. ‘Well, then, let’s see what we can find out.’ He led Knox into the church. Knox hadn’t been inside it for years and it was like stepping back into his former life. Even the smell was familiar; it reminded him of sitting next to his mother.

  In the vestry – a high-ceilinged room at the back of the church – Knox waited while Marks consulted some leather-bound tomes stacked on wooden shelves behind a large desk. His thoughts returned to the old days, sitting next to his mother on one of the rock-hard pews, his father at home, sleeping off the ale from the night before. Knox was surprised how much he cherished these memories, a time before Matthew and Peter, when it was just the two of them.

  ‘1806, you say?’ Marks had heaved one of the volumes off the shelf and put it on the desk.

  ‘March.’

  The vicar nodded and turned over a page, then another, then another. Knox peered over his shoulder.

  ‘Perhaps you’d permit me to consult my birth certificate in private,’ he said, afraid that the vicar might see something that would alert his suspicions.

  Marks looked up, a little flustered. ‘Oh, yes, I see.’ Aware it was a delicate matter, he stood up and pulled down his cassock. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  Knox sat down and turned the pages until he’d found the entries for March. He saw Johns’ name near the bottom of the page. He could hear his own heart thumping.

  Born on the tenth day of March eighteen hundred and six.

  He let his finger drift across the page but there was no entry in the column for the father’s name. It had been left blank. Fighting back the disappointment, Knox checked to see the mother’s name.

  He blinked, couldn’t trust his eyes, had to look again. But it was just as he’d seen it the first time.

  Sarah Jane Maguire. His mother’s maiden name.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  SUNDAY, 13 DECEMBER 1846

  Merthyr Tydfil, Wales

  Pyke came upon the churchyard from the path and looked beyond the headstones at the church itself, boxy and deserted. Cathy Hancock had visited regularly, to tend the grave of her deceased daughter. Now she and her son were also dead. Perhaps William Hancock had been buried next to his sister, Pyke thought, whereas Cathy had been left to rot in an underground passageway built by her father-in-law as an escape route, and used by her husband to smuggle prostitutes into his bed. Did Jonah and Zephaniah Hancock know that Cathy had committed suicide? Pyke didn’t know for certain that Cathy had, in fact, killed herself, but all the evidence pointed towards it; the slashed wrists, the blood-crusted knife. Jonah and Zephaniah had taken off for England. Maybe they had looked for her and hadn’t been able to find her; but then again perhaps they had found her and decided that she wasn’t worth burying. This was where she ought to rest, Pyke decided. When it was all over, he’d come back for her, give her the burial she deserved.

  An owl hooted and then something rustled in nearby bushes. A disembodied voice said, ‘Detective-inspector Pyke?’

  In the gloom, a figure came into view. Maggie Atkins took a couple of steps towards him. She was wearing a dirty white cotton dress and a woollen shawl but looked cold and bedraggled, her hair dangling over her face.

  ‘Cathy talked about you a lot. I saw you once – a month ago – at John’s cabin and then again last night, same place. That’s why I left the note.’

  Her cheeks were pinched, her figure almost skeletal.

  ‘I’ve just come from the Castle.’ Pyke waited for a moment. ‘I found Cathy’s body there. I think she killed herself.’

  Maggie Atkins gasped softly and then covered her mouth. ‘She … she blamed herself …’ Tears welled in her eyes.

  ‘Her wrists had been slit. I found her in an underground passageway at the back of the building.’

  William’s former nanny tried to fight back the tears. ‘I tried to talk to her, reason with her …’

  ‘Why did she blame herself for William’s death?’

  There was a wild look in her eyes. ‘You don’t know? Cathy always thought you’d find out.’

  ‘Find out what?’ Pyke’s mind was racing, trying to make the connection.

  ‘There was no kidnapping – at least not a genuine one. It was staged to appear genuine, for the benefit of the driver and ultimately Jonah Hancock.’ Maggie’s head was bowed and her tone was di
sconsolate.

  Pyke’s mind drifted back to the first words Cathy had said to him. You shouldn’t have come. She hadn’t asked for him, hadn’t wanted him there. Cathy – and others, including Maggie – had set the whole thing up with the intention, no doubt, of extorting twenty thousand pounds from her husband. And then what? For a moment Pyke wondered at the recklessness and naivety of the scheme. There was no way men like the Hancocks would have allowed such a thing to take place without exacting retribution. His mind turned to her body. Perhaps this was what had happened.

  ‘Tell me about it, Maggie.’

  She nodded once. ‘I suppose Cathy had had enough of her husband’s boorish ways, his infidelities, her father-in-law’s interference. She knew he’d never consent to a divorce, at least not one that allowed her to keep William. And she couldn’t afford to leave just like that. In any case, she’d put up with the Hancocks for five years, and she believed she deserved something for her efforts.’

  Pyke thought about Cathy’s unhappiness and what it must have taken to drive her to do such a thing. ‘And you and John Johns agreed to help?’

  Maggie stared at him and then nodded. ‘I saw at first hand how terrible her husband and her father-in-law could be.’

  ‘And Johns? Was he her lover?’

  Maggie blushed a little, perhaps taken aback by the bluntness of his question. ‘Some of the time. I think he liked her more than she liked him. But he had his own reasons for wanting to get back at the Hancocks.’

  It made sense now, Johns’ occasional diffidence towards him; he would have seen Pyke as a rival for Cathy’s affection. Perhaps Johns had been spying on them the night he and Cathy had embraced in the garden.

  ‘So they concocted this plan? Execute the kidnapping and then send a ransom note to the Castle from Scottish Cattle.’ Pyke waited and said, ‘You wrote the first letter – and the last one.’

  Maggie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She was shivering from the cold. ‘That was John’s idea, Scottish Cattle. He did it to confuse the Hancocks; no one’s heard from the Bull in years.’

  ‘You didn’t send the second letter, though? The one directing me up to the quarry.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Know who did?’

  ‘No.’

  Pyke studied her expression and decided he believed her. ‘But you – Cathy – must have believed Jonah would pay.’

  ‘I was nursemaid and nanny to that boy for four years. Jonah had his faults, plenty of them, but he loved his son.’

  ‘It would have been cruel, then, what you all planned to do. Take his son away from him, presumably start a new life with the twenty thousand?’

  ‘Let me put it a different way. He loved the idea of his son. But most of the time he hardly saw William.’

  Pyke considered this. It made him think of his own failings as a father. The same accusation could have been levelled at him. ‘What happened, after Johns set up the kidnapping? Where did you keep the boy?’

  ‘That hut, up the slope from his cabin.’ Maggie’s cheeks coloured slightly. ‘I think I saw you from the window one day …’

  So the Hancock boy had been there the first time Pyke had visited. No wonder Johns had poked a rifle in his face.

  ‘Did Cathy say whether Jonah or Zephaniah suspected anything?’

  ‘That was her main worry. She thought one of them, especially Zephaniah, would work it out. But she didn’t think they had, even at the end.’

  ‘So what went wrong with the kidnapping?’ He was starting to form an impression of Maggie Atkins: a devoted servant who had seen Cathy’s unhappiness and decided to help.

  ‘John had this notion that someone was following him. There were people he trusted, radicals, the ones who’d helped him carry out the kidnapping. So the day before the rendezvous at the railway station, he had them stage an ambush in the middle of town – to check whether anyone really was following him, and make people think he’d disappeared. He wanted to lie low for the night, make sure no one knew where he was. His task was to collect the ransom money – meet the train at Cwmbach, collect the suitcase and then jump off between there and Fernhill.’

  So it hadn’t been Wylde and his bullies who had snatched Johns in broad daylight. But Smyth had known about it because that was how Pyke had found out.

  ‘What was your part in the whole affair? You were looking after William, right? All being well, he was due to arrive on the eleven o’clock train.’

  ‘The night before, Johns took me and the boy to Fernhill. We stayed in a room near the station. He said he would let me know if all went well; then all I had to do was put William on the train.’

  ‘Weren’t you worried the boy might say something to his father afterwards? He would have been part of the deception, or at least he would have had to play along with it. Wasn’t that too much of a burden to put on his shoulders?’

  ‘You never met William, did you?’ Maggie’s eyes started to mist up again.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He was a thoughtful, intelligent boy. In all honesty, he hated his life at the Castle, hated to see his mother so sad. His father was an abstraction to him and he cried whenever Zephaniah tried to take him in hand. Cathy was his life, and when she asked him if he’d be happy to move somewhere else, start again, he said yes. He could be cunning if necessary. And stubborn, too. He knew what was at stake.’

  ‘So Cathy’s plan was to take William back to the Castle for a while, pretend everything was fine. Then what? Disappear one night and never return.’

  ‘Something like that.’ Maggie wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her dress. ‘Cathy felt it was too risky, fleeing straight away. Better to let the dust settle, pick her moment. Perhaps when Jonah and Zephaniah went to London on business or their home in Hampshire.’

  Pyke considered the plan and tried to work out whether it was stupid, foolhardy or brilliant in its own way.

  ‘So what happened? What went wrong?’

  ‘That night, I was in the room in Fernhill, with William. Neither of us slept much, as you can imagine. As it was getting light I heard voices, whispers, outside the window.’ Maggie had to pause, the rawness of the memories still too much for her. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Pyke looked around the barren churchyard, the headstones. ‘Take all the time you need.’

  Maggie nodded forlornly. ‘I rushed over to the window. That’s when I saw him: he was standing outside, face clear in the dawn.’

  ‘Saw who?’

  ‘Sir Clancy Smyth.’

  Pyke stared at her; he hadn’t expected this. He still didn’t know how the magistrate was implicated in Felix’s death but he hadn’t suspected Smyth’s involvement in the kidnapping.

  ‘You knew who he was?’

  Maggie nodded. ‘I’d seen him at the Castle a few times.’

  ‘But he wasn’t on his own?’

  ‘No.’ She took a breath, trying to control her emotions. ‘There was another man with him, someone I couldn’t see properly. A moment or two later, his man kicked down the door. He was wearing a handkerchief over his face. He picked up William with one arm and there was a pistol in the other hand. He was as close as you are. He aimed the pistol at me and I think I screamed. Then at the last moment, he turned, fired it into the wall. William was shouting, trying to wriggle free, but the man’s grip was too strong. He took the boy and I heard the carriage leave. That was the last time I saw him.’ Tears were flowing down her cheeks.

  Pyke offered her his handkerchief but she declined. He was trying to make sense of what she’d just told him, the unidentified man firing but deliberately, it appeared, missing her.

  ‘So what did you do next?’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. I panicked. I didn’t dare get on the train. I thought they might be waiting for me at the station. So I walked – ran, actually – back to Merthyr, picked up a ride that took me to Caedraw, and from there I went to the cabin, I didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘And d
id Cathy and Johns come and find you?’

  Maggie nodded. ‘Eventually. John came. I told him what had happened. He said the suitcase wasn’t on the train.’

  ‘I left it there, in the first-class carriage. I saw the train pull out of the station.’

  ‘Well, according to John, it was gone about five minutes later, when he joined the train at Cwmbach.’ Pyke thought about the two men in the first-class carriage. Perhaps one of them had taken it after all.

  ‘Did he say who he thought had taken the money?’

  Maggie wouldn’t look at him.

  ‘Maggie?’

  Slowly she lifted her head to meet his gaze. ‘Your name was mentioned. Then I told him what I’d seen, who I’d seen. That changed things. He left and I didn’t see him again.’

  ‘And Cathy?’

  ‘She came later; she was out of her mind with worry. When I told her what had happened, she broke down.’ Maggie took another deep breath.

  Gently Pyke placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘And?’

  ‘She didn’t tell me what she planned to do. I assumed she was going back to the Castle. We agreed that it was no longer safe to hide at John’s cabin. I told her I would come up here, to an abandoned stone cottage near the cemetery. She promised she’d come and find me.’

  ‘But she never did.’

  Maggie shook her head. ‘A little later, I heard about William, that his body had been found in the town.’

  ‘You assumed Smyth and the other man must have killed him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve been living up here ever since?’

  ‘I didn’t know where else to go. Every so often, I went back to John’s cabin, to see if anyone had been there. I thought John might return. Or Cathy.’ She shook her head. ‘Yesterday, when I saw the light, the fire, I thought it must be one of them. I crept up and saw you in the window. That’s why I left the note.’ She looked at him, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘Who do you think killed the boy?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s hard not to point the finger at Smyth, though.’ Yet Pyke couldn’t see what the magistrate would have to gain from it, apart from using the death as an excuse to send in the troops.