‘That was very prompt of you, Walter,’ Pyke said, ushering Wells into his private office. ‘I’m gratified by your change of heart.’
‘I wouldn’t call it a change of heart, Pyke. To be perfectly honest, I still think Hiley killed Guppy.’
‘Then you’re just following orders?’
‘Not exactly.’ Wells sat down and waited for Pyke to do likewise. ‘Right or wrong, I arrived at the conclusion that arresting Francis Hiley would help me steal a march on my friend from Holborn Division. In the meantime, I’ve shut my eyes to other possibilities, including the admittedly fine detective work that you and your men have been carrying out.’ He paused and rubbed his chin. ‘The irony is, and I didn’t realise this until just now in the meeting, Pierce thinks as I do. Our positions are essentially the same; he also sees the arrest of Hiley as the best route to becoming assistant commissioner. Therefore the political advantage I can glean from this is limited.’
‘I did wonder for a moment whether you and Pierce had had some kind of rapprochement,’ Pyke said.
‘Far from it, Pyke. Far from it.’ Wells shook his head. ‘In fact, Pierce has been busy pointing out my relative inexperience to Mayne and Rowan and anyone else who’ll listen.’
Pyke had fully expected to have a row with Wells. Now he was thrown by Wells’s volte-face, even if it was motivated by self-interest.
‘When do you expect the post of assistant commissioner to be filled?’
‘Within the next few months. I’m told, unofficially of course, that Pierce is ahead of me at the moment.’
‘A lot can happen in a couple of months,’ Pyke said.
Wells nodded. ‘I won’t pretend I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the situation vis-à-vis Guppy’s murder but I do understand that I need to put some clear water between myself and Pierce.’
Pyke eyed him carefully but he was more predisposed to accept Wells’s explanation, now he had admitted his self-interest. ‘So what do you propose, Walter?’
‘I’m offering to support whatever approach you decide to take.’ He gave a forced smile. ‘I do still have some influence in the building.’
‘I don’t doubt it and I’m very grateful to you.’ They stared at one another across Pyke’s desk.
‘Good, I’m glad we’ve got that sorted out.’ Wells stood up suddenly. Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, ‘Actually there was something else I thought I should mention . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s a little sensitive,’ Wells said, his expression serious. ‘And it involves our friend from Holborn’s plans for you . . .’
Pyke nodded and his entire face darkened, but he tried to make light of the situation. ‘Forgive me for not being too concerned. Pierce has been plotting my downfall since we were Bow Street Runners back in the twenties.’
‘But this time, I’m told, he seems to think he has the ways and means of fatally wounding you.’
‘Who told you this?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t say. But I can assure you my informant is reliable.’ Wells paused, trying to gather his thoughts. ‘If there’s anything in your past that Pierce could use, anything he could exploit, my advice would be to bury it.’
‘Your informant couldn’t be more particular?’
‘I’m afraid not. But I’d say you should be extremely careful. Pierce can be a vindictive man and unfortunately he’s not stupid.’
After Wells had left, Pyke looked up at the cracked ceiling and the flaking plasterwork and contemplated what he’d just learned. Part of him wanted to catch Pierce in a deserted alleyway and beat him with a cudgel until the man’s skull split open, but he knew deep down that winning against a man like Pierce required more than menace or brute force.
There was nothing to be done except wait. Instead of patrolling the streets of Soho and St Giles, Pyke spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon re-reading the files, reports and route-papers relating to the investigation five years earlier. It didn’t take him long to realise that the process hadn’t been as thorough as Shaw and Pierce had intimated. Little was known about the victims, the two boys, apart from their age and criminal predilections. Johnny Gregg had been twelve and Stephen Clough eleven. No one, as far as Pyke could tell, had bothered to find out about their families, and it was the same with the alleged perpetrator, Morris Keate. According to the records, Keate had been a night-soil man who worked with three other men, but there was no indication that any of these men had been interviewed. Likewise, there were no further details about Keate’s mother and his siblings: two brothers and a sister. As Pyke leafed through the various pieces of paper, he wondered whether anyone had bothered to speak directly to the family. The Crown’s case against Keate seemed to rely on the fact that an item of clothing allegedly belonging to Gregg and a hammer with dried blood on it had been found in Keate’s tool-chest. The prosecuting lawyer had also tried to portray Keate as a religious madman, a Devil worshipper prone to violent outbursts. As far as Pyke could see, Keate himself had not been well represented and had offered little or no defence.
At three o’clock, Pyke went upstairs to find Wells, but the acting superintendent was ‘in the field’. Pyke asked one of the clerks whether there had been any developments and was told that nothing had been reported.
Outside, snow was falling. Pyke took a brief walk down to the river. The pavements and cobblestones had been turned into a carpet of white, dazzling against the dull Portland stone of the buildings, even in the ebbing light. He thought briefly about the scene at home; Felix had always loved playing in the snow; maybe he would be outside in the garden with Copper. For a moment or two, Pyke indulged this particular thought with a twinge of guilt that he wasn’t at home to see it for himself, but then it struck him that he’d been thinking about a memory that was eight or nine years old. Was it a coincidence that his happiest memories of time spent with his son were all in the distant past? Pyke suddenly felt very old; his son was now fourteen and wouldn’t be at home for much longer. What would become of them then? Would they still see each other?
Pulled back into the present by a barking dog, Pyke’s thoughts turned to the matter in hand; Ebenezer Druitt and his casual reference to the date of Guppy’s murder. He thought about the anonymous note and how this had brought both Malloy and Druitt to his attention. But who had sent him the letter? Was this person also the murderer and, if so, why had he wanted to bring No. 28 Broad Street into the equation? By the time Pyke got back to the relative warmth of his office, he could barely feel his ears and nose.
Wells visited him at about eight and then again just before eleven. He had nothing to report. It was strange, Pyke thought once he was alone, to be disappointed that no one had died; that no one had been murdered. At midnight, he pulled his coat around him and shut his eyes. He woke at two and then again at four. At half-past six, he got up and went outside to the tap in the yard. He’d intended to wash his face but the water in the pipe had frozen. Everywhere was white, any noise muffled by the covering of snow. At eight, when the first clerks arrived, Pyke’s suspicions were confirmed: nothing out of the ordinary had occurred during the night. A flower seller had frozen to death in Covent Garden and a tanner’s assistant had been stabbed and wounded in a brawl outside a tavern in Bermondsey. These would have to be looked into by either the Detective Branch or whichever division had jurisdiction for central and south-east London, but Pyke didn’t pay the cases any attention that morning. Instead, he paced up and down the corridor, wondering what had happened and how he had managed to get it so wrong.
By Wednesday afternoon, almost two days after the night of the thirteenth of December had passed, there was still no sign of a body. During this time Pyke had tried unsuccessfully to find Malloy and had been told by Mayne to give up on his ‘far-flung notion’ and concentrate his efforts on finding Hiley. In one ill-tempered meeting, an evidently furious Mayne had held Pyke personally responsible for his ‘reckless’ prediction that a mu
rder would take place, and had berated himself for lending his support to Pyke in the first place.
‘How long would it take for someone to die if they were crucified?’ Pyke asked Whicher and Lockhart.
They were sitting in the main office drinking tea that one of the clerks had just brought for them.
‘It wouldn’t be immediate,’ Lockhart said. ‘That’s the point, isn’t it? To draw it out for as long as possible and inflict the most pain.’
Whicher looked at him, frowning. ‘Are you saying that our body may still be out there somewhere?’
‘Not exactly. Stephen Clough was stabbed, too, remember? That was the wound that killed him, according to the coroner.’
‘So?’
‘So why go to the effort of crucifying someone, only to stab them in the gut?’
Lockhart considered this. ‘Perhaps the crucifixion was some kind of symbolic act.’
‘In what sense?’ Pyke asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Lockhart brought the cup to his lips and sipped his tea. ‘To make it appear that the murder was religiously motivated?’
Whicher sat back. ‘Clough was nailed to a door in a busy part of the city. Maybe he was stabbed as an afterthought. If the murderer had just left him to die, Clough might have been able to identify him.’
They were both credible explanations.
‘What if the second death we’ve been expecting wasn’t reported to the police? Look at these.’ Eddie Lockhart showed Pyke the death notices he’d been reading in The Times. ‘Five of them, all from natural causes.’
‘If they all died from natural causes, I don’t see how they could be of any interest to us.’ Pyke yawned. He’d hardly slept in the past forty-eight hours.
‘But that’s just it. How do we know for certain that all these people did die of natural causes? Do you see my point?’
‘Anyone who dies in suspicious circumstances has to be seen by the coroner. You can’t just put someone in the ground.’
Lockhart shrugged. ‘It was just an idea.’
But it was the only idea any of them had had and so Pyke sent Lockhart and Whicher to collect a list from the coroners of everyone who had died in suspicious circumstances since Monday. They came back with three names. A retired bank clerk from Somers Town called Willis, who had stepped out in front of a fast-moving phaeton, a sanitary inspector from Walworth who’d died in his bed, and a bank director and alderman who’d collapsed suddenly and without explanation at his place of work. In addition, four still-unidentified men and women had frozen to death as a result of the cold weather.
Pyke asked whether there was any more information about the alderman. Lockhart shook his head.
‘Was the death reported in the newspaper?’
Frowning, Whicher went to retrieve The Times from his desk. ‘There was something, I believe.’ He looked through the copy he’d been reading earlier in the day but couldn’t find any mention of it. But when he retrieved the previous day’s newspaper from a pile under his desk, he found what he’d been looking for. He handed it to Pyke, open at the relevant page. There were few details about the death itself. Seemingly the man in question, Charles Harcourt Hogarth, had been working alone in his private chambers and had suffered a seizure or stroke. His body had been found the following morning by one of the porters. Pyke read on:Charles Harcourt Hogarth, 55, was the second son of John Harcourt Hogarth. Educated at Eton college, he entered his father’s engineering firm at the age of eighteen. In 1808 he was admitted as a partner in the contracting firm Lovell and Lyne under whose stewardship the London to Sittingbourne and London to Epsom turnpikes were macadamised and part of the Regent’s canal was built. In 1820 he joined the board of the Regent-Colonial Bank and, in 1829, he was invited to join the City Corporation as a councilman. In 1835 he was elected for life to a Court of Aldermen which he served until his death and was thought to be a future candidate for the position of Lord Mayor. In his role as court Alderman, he was responsible for improving the state of the City of London’s roads and pavements and more recently he had spoken of the need to establish public baths and washhouses in the capital, the first of which is due to be founded in Goulston Square, Whitechapel. Charles Harcourt Hogarth is survived by his wife, Helen, and their children, Mark and George.
Putting down the newspaper, Pyke looked at Lockhart and then Whicher. ‘Go back to the coroner, find out exactly what happened and where the body is now.’
They returned about two hours later, and told Pyke that the coroner had confirmed the cause of death as a massive heart seizure and that the body had been taken to the family home in Chelsea in anticipation of the funeral, which was planned for the end of the week.
‘He was nervous, though,’ Whicher said. ‘Especially when he realised it was Hogarth, and not the others, we wanted to talk about.’
‘By the end, he was sweating like a pig,’ Lockhart added.
‘Do you think he was trying to hide something?’
‘It was hard to tell.’ Lockhart looked over at Whicher. ‘You know anything about this man, Hogarth?’
‘A man in his fifties, an alderman who’s probably eaten and drunk too well, keels over at his desk.’ Whicher said. ‘It happens all the time.’
‘True, but aren’t you sufficiently curious to want to pay the family a visit?’ Pyke rose from his seat. ‘Anyone want to join me?’
Charles Harcourt Hogarth may have inherited his wealth and business from his father but everything about his mansion and indeed his widow suggested new rather than old money. With its pillars, porticos and pediments all designed in the classical style, the property, situated just off the King’s Road, screamed ‘parvenu’ even to someone like Pyke, who wasn’t especially knowledgeable about architectural styles. It was as if someone had built the house with the sole intention of impressing others; the white stone walls, the smooth, marble floors, the statues in the entrance hall, all testament to the owner’s relentlessly upward mobility. Eventually, when the butler finally granted Pyke and Whicher five minutes with the lady of the house, they saw that Helen Hogarth conformed to the same maxim: she was wearing black, of course, but the style of her dress and the cut of the fabric were remorselessly fashionable. As befitted someone who hadn’t been born into wealth, Helen Hogarth treated the two of them with palpable disdain. She shook their hands as though the act itself were a violation of her bodily purity, and as soon as Pyke asked about her late husband, she informed them, with a haughty, almost fey flick of her hand, that she couldn’t possibly answer any questions about her darling Charles, especially since the funeral was still so fresh in her mind.
‘Do you mean that the funeral has already taken place?’ Pyke looked over at Whicher, unable to contain his surprise.
She looked at him with a puzzled expression. ‘That’s exactly what I mean, sir.’
‘But it was my understanding, madam, that your husband only passed away two nights ago.’
‘And?’
‘It was always my understanding that the arrangements for such affairs always took at least a week.’
They were sitting in the parlour and the butler and another servant were hovering near by.
She smiled blandly. ‘I could ask what business is it of yours how I or my family choose to conduct our private affairs.’ The rictus smile started to fade. ‘But since you’ve come here as a representative of the law, I’ll say only this. Charles had always talked about wanting a small, private family funeral. As such, I saw no reason for dillydallying. The parish church was able to accommodate the funeral and dear Charles was laid to rest in the family’s mausoleum at the London and Westminster cemetery.’
‘But the coroner’s inquest often takes a couple of days to arrange . . .’
Helen Hogarth nodded, her expression almost pained. ‘Yes, I suppose we were fortunate that he was able to expedite things a little.’
Still thrown by her revelation, Pyke said, ‘It’s Wednesday. Your husband died on Monday and he’s alread
y been buried. Do you see why I’m a little puzzled?’
Her face hardened. ‘No, not really. I made a decision that I felt was in the best interests of my family and my dear, departed husband. Now you come to my house and imply that I’ve done something wrong.’
‘Not wrong, madam. Just a little unusual. The coroner indicated that your husband died of a cardiac seizure. Is that correct?’
‘If that is what the coroner said, sir, why ask me?’
‘I’m not disputing the coroner’s findings. I’m just wondering how he was able to arrive at this conclusion. Perhaps your husband had a long history of chest pains?’
That drew an exasperated sigh. ‘Can you please tell me the purpose of these questions, sir? Are you suggesting that my husband might have done something wrong?’
‘Not at all . . .’
The Detective Branch Page 20