The Revenge of Captain Paine

by Andrew Pepper

  EIGHTEEN

  As he walked along the Waterloo Road, Pyke was stopped at almost every street corner by women with painted faces propositioning him. Some did so from the steps of their ramshackle dwellings, others called out to him through broken windowpanes. It was early evening and the air had turned so cold he could see his breath in front of him. This was one of the grimmest streets in London with its open cess trenches and pervasive stench of poverty and despair. But worse still was New Cut, a street that ran perpendicular to Waterloo Road, where the daily market left a stink of such immense magnitude that it was hard to negotiate its pavements without being sick. In one short stretch, Pyke counted five ginneries, a beer shop, four brothels, three slop shops and a dozen doss houses. In front of each, dishevelled men and women guzzled home-brewed gin straight from the bottle and would do so until the early hours, because the alternative, lying on open floors while rats nibbled their frostbitten fingers, was too unattractive a prospect. Above them, the smoke from the breweries and factories that clung to the south bank of the river had turned the skies black.

  This was also the street where Maggie Shaw had grown up and where her parents had once tended a barrow in the market.

  Looking at the piles of rotting vegetables and offal lining the gutters, it was hard to believe that Maggie had once graced this street. It was hard to believe she had really moved among the rickety barrows stacked with cagmag, oilskin caps, rancid fish, soiled clothes, mildewed boots and second-hand corduroy coats, and hard to believe that she had once belonged to the same tribe of people Pyke now passed - drunken, toothless creatures who would slit your throat in a minute if they believed you had money and they could get away with it. Perhaps Maggie was right. Perhaps she had never really belonged there, just as he had never really belonged in St Giles. Having lifted themselves out of poverty, they had found security and prosperity in their middle years, but this wealth did not necessarily breed a sense of entitlement and, for Pyke at least, the feeling that it might at any point be snatched from his grip remained with him constantly. Maybe it was the same for Maggie, he mused.

  If the opera and ballet represented the most rarefied ‘arts’ experience in the capital, attracting a predominantly aristocratic audience who would clap politely and share gossip in the intervals, the theatre was a generally more rambunctious affair. This didn’t include venues like the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden and those on Drury Lane and Haymarket: these establishments still catered to gormless gentlemen and their ugly wives. But throughout the capital, there were hundreds of smaller venues staging bastardised versions of Hamlet or loose adaptations of popular novels and fables, and at any of these actors could expect to be abused and harangued from the pit by members of the public who might be sodden with drink. At such establishments the actors were rarely if ever professional, in the sense that they earned money from their craft. Rather they were clerks, shop boys and milliners who trod the boards in order to escape from the grim tedium of their everyday existences. Kate Sutton’s beau, Johnny, was apparently such a figure, but his domain was a good deal less salubrious even than these ‘low’ venues. The so-called ‘penny gaffs’, which tended to be situated in the poorest parts of the capital, represented the grubbiest, bawdiest and least refined stage experience of all. It was not unusual to be mugged or robbed in such venues, often at the behest of the management, and children as young as twelve copulated in their dark corners.

  There were four penny gaffs on New Cut, and when he eventually found the right one, having followed directions given to him by Freddie Sutton, it turned out to be little more than a warehouse, an empty shell of a building with exposed joists and damp walls. The stage, if it could be called that, comprised a few planks of wood nailed to a collection of overturned wooden beer barrels, and the only lighting was provided by an assortment of tallow candles, haphazardly arranged at the back of the stage in different-shaped wooden holders.

  Pyke found the performers sitting on wooden crates at the back of the stage. They were drinking gin from the bottle and one of them, a tall, brutish man dressed to resemble a monarch or prince, was smoking a pipe. They looked up in response to his question and the king told him to get lost.

  ‘I asked where I could find Johnny,’ Pyke repeated, this time putting some metal into his tone.

  The three of them continued to stare at him blankly.

  ‘I was under the impression Johnny worked here.’

  ‘Johnny, you say? Ain’t shown his ugly face here for more ’n a month now.’ The king stood up and rearranged his faux velvet cloak. He was a brute of a man with grazed knuckles, broad shoulders, cauliflower ears and a nose that had been broken in more than two places.

  ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

  ‘Johnny?’ He stole a glance at the other two. ‘You could always try the Theatre Royal.’ They all guffawed loudly.

  ‘Why do I get the sense that I’m not likely to find him there?’

  ‘Look around you, cully. This ain’t exactly Drury Lane.’ The king picked up his paper crown from the floor and placed it on his head. ‘Now beat it. The show’s about to start.’

  ‘Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,’ Pyke said, removing the pistol from his belt and poking the end of the barrel into the man’s chin. ‘I asked where I could find Johnny.’

  The king regarded him coolly but the other two sprang to their feet and sought to appease him. ‘One day he was here and the next day he wasn’t. Didn’t give no explanation, neither.’ The man who’d spoken was also dressed to resemble a king or an aristocrat but in a much more grotesque manner; there was a pillow stuffed under his coat to make him look fatter and he wore shoes decorated with hair to resemble animals’ feet. ‘This whole thing was Johnny’s idea. When he was around, he’d play my role. I reckon he liked the reaction he got from the crowd.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Pyke jabbed the barrel of his pistol into the cleft of the taller man’s chin. ‘Is your friend suggesting Johnny had the talent?’

  ‘Johnny liked to think so.’ But the king did not seem unsettled by the pistol.

  A bell rang and the three actors looked at one another. One of them explained that the show was about to begin but assured him they would answer his questions once it was finished. Pyke knew he was keeping something back but decided to let them go because the crowd was starting to get restless. Putting the pistol back in his belt, he took his place among the noisy crowd, trying to ignore the stink of unwashed bodies, and waited for the performance to begin.

  ‘Enter our glorious, beloved monarch, William IV, King of England, Scotland and Ireland,’ one of the actors bellowed from behind the makeshift stage.

  ‘What about Wales?’ someone shouted from the back of the room.

  ‘Who gives a fuck about those leek-eating noddies?’ someone else yelled in reply. This got the loudest cheer of the night.

  The king climbed up on to the stage, the paper crown resting uneasily on his head. He too now had a pillow strapped around his waist, still visible under his torn velveteen coat. As he strutted around the small stage, his regal waves were absurdly fey but the mob didn’t seem to mind; though they mocked him more than they applauded him, their mood was generally good natured.

  ‘Now enter the King’s conniving brother, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and Earl of Armagh.’

  The mood of the crowd changed at once, and as soon as the actor playing the duke had climbed up the rickety ladder on to the stage, he was pelted with rotten vegetables and roundly jeered. In addition to numerous pillows crammed under his bulging jacket and his cloven shoes and tail, dark hair sprouted from every part of his body and his head sported a pair of cuckold’s horns. A Tory Ultra, Cumberland was unpopular among liberals and reform-minded figures for his conservative views, and satirists had taken to representing him in bestial terms.

  The actor playing Cumberland strutted around the tiny stage but the heckling reached a climax only when he assaulted the king; what seemed to be a
playful scuffle quickly turning into a full-blown punching match. Pyke wasn’t certain whether the fight was real or staged - certainly both actors, to the delight of the audience, didn’t seem to be holding back - but when the thuggish king was caught by a blow that lifted him clean off his feet and knocked him from the stage, no one knew whether to applaud the actor for his skilful fall or continue to rail against the unpopular duke.

  Moments later, another actor appeared on the stage and carefully placed an orange sash around Cumberland’s bulging neck, briefly getting the material caught on the tips of his horns. More vociferous booing ensued. In booming voices, the two men congratulated each other over the king’s death and made plans to mobilise every man in their order to seize the crown, repeal the Reform Act and further enslave the poor. There followed a few hammy soliloquies, the best of which saw the duke reminisce about how he’d once slit his valet’s throat and later forced himself on his sister Sophia. These confessions drew gasps of astonishment from the crowd. At one point, one of the crew had to prevent an enraged costermonger from climbing up on to the stage and assaulting the duke himself.

  The final act saw a tall, sneering figure introduced as Sir John Conroy conspiring with Cumberland to murder young Princess Victoria, played by a ripe-looking girl who, much to the crowd’s delight, took every chance to show off her ample cleavage, which was barely hidden under a flimsy muslin dress. The climactic scene featured Cumberland atop a ladder, his shadow covering much of the stage, rubbing his hands together while Conroy administered droplets of poison to the princess. As she weakened, Cumberland climbed down from his vantage point and seized the tattered crown from her head. Pandemonium followed his triumph and a shower of vitriol, and a few rotten carrots, rained down on the stage. At some point, this segued into applause, as the actor who had played the duke took off the crown and basked in the limelight.

  At first, Pyke didn’t hear the shouts from the front of the room but it soon became apparent that something was wrong: the door had been flung open and a stiff breeze filled the fetid room. Then he saw them, their tall stovepipe hats above the bobbing heads of the crowd, a dozen or more police constables forcing their way into the room, wielding rattles and leather truncheons. One of them fought his way up on to the stage and announced that the show was being closed until further notice and the management and actors were being pursued on charges of sedition. If apprehended, Pyke supposed the key players might even face the scaffold.

  The actors seemed to realise their predicament even before the police sergeant had spoken and, having discarded their costumes, they bolted for the exits, along with the rest of the crowd. Pyke followed the one who had played Cumberland down an alleyway that ran along the side of the building and caught up with him in a small court. Others flooded past them but Pyke kept a steely grip on the man’s coat and forced him up against one of the walls. The yard was cluttered with disused costermongers’ carts and a trough for pigs and sheep to feed from.

  ‘Please don’t hurt me, mister.’ His back was facing the wall and his hands were raised to protect his face.

  ‘I just want to talk,’ Pyke said, keeping his tone measured as he opened his hands out in front of him.

  ‘That’s what the other bruiser said, before he did this to me.’ The actor tore open his shirt and let Pyke see three circular burn marks on his left shoulder.

  They were identical to the marks he’d found on the bodies of the headless man and the old crone in Huntingdon.

  Pyke didn’t try to hide his shock. ‘Did he burn you with a cigar?’

  That drew a puzzled expression. ‘How did you know?’

  Pyke gave a description of the man - heavily whiskered and sporting a glass eye. ‘Did he do this to you?’

  The actor seemed nonplussed. ‘He wanted to know where he could find Johnny. I told him I didn’t know but he didn’t believe me.’

  Pyke felt his mind unravel with the confusion. How was it possible that the same man had been hunting for letters stolen from Conroy as well as inciting the navvies to violence in Huntingdon?

  ‘When was this?’

  The actor seemed taken aback by the urgency in his voice. ‘I’d say a month ago.’ The burn marks had faded in the intervening period.

  ‘Can you be more exact?’

  The actor scratched his chin. ‘The show here had just started. It would’ve been the first week in October.’

  It was just before he had been summoned to the Houses of Parliament; before he had first travelled to Huntingdon. Pyke closed his eyes and tried to imagine the headless corpse he’d seen there. ‘Did Johnny have a scar running down the entire length of one of his arms?’

  The actor seemed too bewildered to speak.

  ‘Well, did he or not?’ Pyke reined in the urge to shake him.

  ‘Yes, he did. I think it was his right arm. I remember seeing it when he took off his shirt to give a speech from Hamlet.’

  Pyke contemplated this for a moment, reeling from the shock. ‘Was Johnny about six feet tall, with broad shoulders and well-developed arm and leg muscles?’

  The man nodded dumbly. ‘And dark curly hair.’

  So it had to be true. The headless corpse in Huntingdon belonged to Kate Sutton’s lover.

  Pyke steadied himself against the trough and tried to collect his thoughts. It still didn’t make any sense. How was Johnny’s murder linked to the troubles in Huntingdon? He thought about the decapitated corpse he had seen in the cellar of the watch-house and about the bloody demise of his own assistant, unable to see how the two deaths might be connected.

  ‘Has something happened to him? Has something happened to Johnny?’

  ‘You could say that.’ Pyke looked at the people still streaming out of the building. ‘Did you ever see him with a girl?’ He gave a brief description of Kate.

  ‘No, but he used to boast about fucking a girl who worked in one of the palaces.’

  ‘And he didn’t say anything to you about some letters that might have come into his possession?’

  The actor shook his head forlornly. ‘We weren’t never close. Johnny was always too full of himself for the rest of us.’

  Pyke waited for a moment. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about the man who attacked you? Anything at all that might help me find him.’

  The young actor closed his eyes and opened them again. ‘What he did to me.’ He pointed to the burn marks on his chest and winced. ‘It was the longest cigar I’ve ever seen in my life.’ There were tears in his eyes. Pyke left him next to the pig trough to reminisce about his unpleasant experiences.

  *

  ‘A plot by Cumberland to seize the throne from the young princess, eh?’ Godfrey removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. He was stretched out on the sofa in the front room of his Camden Town apartment, a blanket covering his legs. ‘I seem to remember a rumour to that effect circulating five or six years ago, though Cumberland always denied it.’

  ‘Weren’t there claims he had paid one of the princess’s servants to slip something into her bread and milk?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Godfrey said, with a frown. ‘But you say this “play” had Cumberland in league with Conroy?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Ah, you see, as far as I know, those two men have always despised one another. The Duke of Cumberland might covet the throne but Conroy’s long-term interests depend on preserving the princess’s health. I just can’t see what he’d gain by switching to another horse halfway through the race.’

  Pyke scratched his chin. ‘Of course, Cumberland is soon to appear before a select committee chaired by the radical, Joseph Hume, accused of using his position as Imperial Grand Master of the Orange Order to ferment opposition to the King.’

  It was a well-known secret that the duke held his older brother in low regard and considered his heir, a sixteen-year-old girl, unfit for the task of defending the ascendancy and the British Empire from foreign aggressors. Whether he would sanction a coup d’é
tat against his brother and young niece and risk certain death if he failed was another matter. But as the grand master of more than three hundred thousand Orangemen, many of them belonging to the armed forces, the cantankerous duke was certainly capable of launching such an action.

  ‘Surely even the Prince of Blood wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and seize the throne from the King or the princess.’ Godfrey sipped his claret. ‘To say there’d be an outcry would be an understatement. Working folk wouldn’t wear it. It would bring the country to the brink of revolution.’

  Pyke agreed. It was a horrible proposition. ‘But let’s just say there was something in the letters that encouraged Cumberland’s prospects ...’

  ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some kind of damaging revelation about the King or the princess.’

  Godfrey sat up on the sofa and rearranged the blanket. ‘In which case Cumberland would want to find the letters every bit as much as Conroy. If, that is, he’s learned of their existence.’

  Pyke got up from the armchair and wandered across to the window. He had grown up in this apartment and still found its musty smell vaguely reassuring. ‘Did you have any luck examining that cravat pin?’

  Godfrey shook his head but told Pyke that he’d invited an expert in military affairs over for lunch the next day and would pick his brains then.

  ‘Because I was thinking about the two men who came to your shop. You reckoned one of them said something about “H” not being pleased. What if you missed the first bit? What if he’d actually said, “HRH won’t be pleased”?’ You see what I mean? Perhaps they were sent there by Cumberland.’

  ‘His Royal Highness,’ Godfrey said, reaching for his wineglass.

  ‘It’s just an idea,’ Pyke said, shrugging.

  Godfrey looked up at him. ‘You have an idea what might be in those letters, don’t you?’

  Pyke smiled, as he always did when his uncle displayed his quickness of thought. ‘If I told you the play I saw was Johnny’s creation, would it shed light on my suspicions?’