Kill-Devil and Water pm-3

by Andrew Pepper

  He found Charles Malvern and William Alefounder in Malvern’s study. Between them, they had drunk most of a bottle of brandy, and despite the foul conditions outside they seemed quite merry.

  ‘Do tell, what was that terrible crash, Pemberton?’ Malvern said, without even looking up. His cheeks were glowing from the alcohol he’d consumed. ‘Are we really all going to perish in the storm?’ Perhaps he hadn’t seen or comprehended the damage the storm had done to the great house.

  Malvern hadn’t noticed Pyke but Alefounder had. For a moment, Pyke almost felt sorry for the man. Dripping with water, sodden, holding a shovel, Pyke must have been the very last man Alefounder had expected and wanted to see, and he reacted accordingly; his jaw went slack, his eyes bulged, and the colour fell from his cheeks. Alefounder had travelled halfway around the world to escape persecution from a man who had forced his arm into a pot of boiling liquid and now that same man had just walked into the room in the middle of perhaps the worst storm he’d ever witnessed. His teeth began to chatter, his hands trembled and his lips turned blue but in the end, he managed to stammer, ‘ Y…y…you,’ as though this was all that was needed.

  It could have been a pleasant scene, Pyke thought as he looked around the room. Old friends getting quietly drunk while the elements wreaked havoc around them.

  ‘Squires?’ Malvern looked up at him through a fug of alcohol. ‘I thought you… I thought you…’ But he couldn’t finish his sentence.

  ‘That I was dead? Or that I’d been shot or arrested perhaps? Or that I no longer had any interest in buying Ginger Hill?’

  Alefounder cowered in his chair like a whipped dog.

  ‘Where’s Pemberton?’ Malvern wanted to know.

  ‘I struck him over the head with this.’ Pyke held up the shovel and said, to Alefounder, ‘Have you told him yet?’

  Alefounder looked over at Malvern and shook his head. He looked about as crushed as a man could be. The shutters rattled violently against their jambs but no one took any notice of them.

  ‘Told me what?’ Malvern put his empty glass down. ‘I demand to know what is going on.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Charles. I was going to tell you tomorrow, after the storm had passed…’

  ‘Tell me what, for God’s sake?’

  ‘That your fiancee is dead,’ Pyke interrupted. ‘She was murdered in London shortly after she arrived there.’ He kept his voice low and hard.

  Malvern stared at him, an inane smile plastered on his face. ‘Murdered?’

  ‘She was strangled and her body dumped near the docks. Her eyeballs had been cut out.’ Pyke looked across at Alefounder to see how he reacted to this last piece of news but the trader’s expression remained glazed and his stare empty. Pyke placed the shovel against the wall.

  ‘I’m sorry but I have to go…’ Alefounder tried to stand up but Pyke pushed him back into his chair.

  ‘This has to be some kind of mistake,’ Malvern said, bemused, looking at Pyke as if he were still Monty Squires and the world a benevolent place. ‘Who are you, sir?’

  ‘I was charged with the task of finding her killer.’ Pyke looked at Alefounder, but the trader made no comment.

  ‘You mean all this time…’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s more bad news,’ Pyke said, interrupting. He didn’t have time for the man’s histrionics. ‘Your godfather, Lord William Bedford, was also murdered, in an apparently separate incident. I didn’t know that Mary had stayed with him until you told me about it a few days ago. Now I’m certain the two deaths are related.’

  ‘Uncle William?’ Malvern tried to stand up but stumbled, his hands clutching the sides of his davenport. ‘Did you know about this, Alefounder?’

  The trader’s eyelids twitched and beads of sweat broke out around his temples. ‘I was going to tell you…’

  ‘So it’s true?’ Malvern stared at him, a feral grunt escaping from his mouth. ‘She’s really dead? My Mary’s dead? And Uncle William?’ He sat there staring at nothing, tapping his closed fist on the davenport. His world had collapsed in the space of a few seconds; and it was hard not to feel sympathy for him. But Pyke had travelled more than three thousand miles for this moment and he wasn’t about to let the opportunity slip from his grasp.

  ‘Tell me something, Alefounder: when did you first fuck Mary Edgar? Was it last year when you visited Ginger Hill?’

  Alefounder opened his mouth — just — but actually speaking seemed to be beyond him. Malvern stared at him, trying to make sense of the question Pyke had just put to him.

  ‘You met her ship when it docked in London but she wasn’t interested in you any more. You begged her to get into your carriage, and eventually she succumbed, but it wasn’t the same. She wasn’t the same. She told you she didn’t want to see you. She spurned you. In the end, you couldn’t take it any more so you strangled her and then dumped her body on the Ratcliff Highway.’

  ‘ No.’ The shout came out of Alefounder’s mouth like an anguished sob.

  ‘But the two of you were lovers. You were besotted with her, weren’t you?’

  Malvern stared at the trader, still trying to come to terms with what was unfolding. His fiancee had gone from merely being dead to being a harlot, but Pyke guessed that Malvern knew this already: it was why he’d sent her away in the first place. ‘Did you bed her here, in my house?’ Malvern’s face was suddenly streaked with tears.

  Alefounder looked at him and mouthed, ‘I’m sorry.’

  Without warning Malvern stood up — at first, Pyke thought, to attack Alefounder — and then charged from the room.

  ‘You’re not going to go after him?’ Alefounder said, a moment later. He looked like a punctured balloon. Pyke wanted to hate him, as he had hated him in London, for his bombast and pride and the way he’d exploited his wealth and position to avoid public censure for his affair with Mary Edgar, but now he seemed like a different person — scared, alone, beaten — and Pyke felt a sudden stab of pity for him.

  ‘And tell him what? That everyone will live happily ever after?’

  ‘What if he decides to slit his own throat or put a pistol to his head and pull the trigger? Do you want his blood on your hands as well?’

  ‘I’m just playing the hand I was dealt.’ But Pyke looked out of the door Malvern had just run through. ‘If you leave this room, if you even move from this chair, I’ll find you, I’ll drag you back in here and I’ll nail your hands and feet to the floor. Is that understood?’

  Eventually he found Malvern downstairs in the kitchen. He was sobbing in Josephine’s arms. The pots and pans were rattling in the wind and the sash windows were shaking in their frames. Josephine shot him a look of disgust. ‘Can’t you leave him alone to grieve?’

  Back in Malvern’s study, Alefounder had moved from his chair but only to fill his glass with brandy. Pyke took the bottle from him and finished it. After all the rum he’d drunk, it tasted smooth and yet a little bitter. ‘I’m going to ask you some questions,’ he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. ‘This time, I want you to tell me the truth.’

  Alefounder just nodded.

  ‘Good.’ Pyke hesitated. ‘Did you kill Mary Edgar?’

  ‘No. I didn’t. I swear…’

  Pyke had to fight back the sour taste of disappointment. He believed Alefounder; that was the problem. In a stroke, he’d lost his chief and, indeed, only suspect. ‘So tell me who did.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you were sleeping with her.’

  This time Alefounder shook his head. There were tears in his eyes. ‘We slept together once here at Ginger Hill. You’re right. I was besotted with her. When I heard she was coming to London, I suppose I jumped to the wrong conclusion.’

  ‘You thought she’d come to be with you?’

  ‘I knew Charles had paid for her passage, and still expected to marry her, but…’ Alefounder paused. ‘I hoped I might change her mind.’

  ‘And did you try?’

  ‘Aft
er I met her off the ship, I suppose it was clear that she hadn’t travelled across the Atlantic to rekindle our affair. I tried to insist that she stay with me, or in an apartment on The Strand I’d rented. She refused and we argued. In the end, I agreed to take her to Bedford’s house in Mayfair, but only on the condition that she meet me the next day for lunch. She refused but a few days later I got a note from her asking whether I’d still be interested in giving her a tour of the city.’

  Pyke searched Alefounder’s face for indications he might be lying but couldn’t see any. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I picked her up in my carriage at the time we’d agreed and we spent the day together. I’d say she was a little lonely. I showed her the apartment I’d rented on The Strand. I hoped… well, you can probably guess what I hoped.’

  ‘And it didn’t happen?’

  ‘Not on that occasion. The next day I picked her up again but this time it was clear that she’d only used me to escape from Bedford’s prying eye. She made me take her to the Tower of London and then she climbed out of the carriage and I never saw her again.’

  Pyke considered what he’d just been told. ‘But when you read about Bedford’s murder, you must have feared the worst, surely? Why didn’t you go to the police and tell them about Mary?’

  The trader looked up at him and wetted his lips. It seemed as if he was considering his options for the first time. Pyke told him to think carefully before he responded.

  ‘Because I had a visit,’ he said eventually.

  ‘From?’

  ‘Silas Malvern. Charles’s father.’

  Pyke nodded. He’d expected as much. ‘Do you know him well?’

  ‘I don’t know how well acquainted you are with my company but if I told you that Silas Malvern owns enough of it to make my life very difficult, would that help you to comprehend my position?’

  ‘He told you if you didn’t do exactly as he said, he’d bankrupt you.’

  Alefounder shook his head. ‘Nothing that explicit, I’m afraid to say. In fact he’s greatly changed these days. Apart from being physically frail — he uses a wheelchair and his eyesight is fading — he’s something of a religious convert. But he’ll still fight tooth and claw to safeguard his family’s good name. He told me that Bedford had been murdered, probably by his valet, and it would over-complicate matters if the police found out the old man had given room and board to Charles’s fiancee.’ Alefounder hesitated and added, ‘Of course, I asked him how Mary was, whether she was safe…’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He told me he’d had a long talk with her and that she’d agreed to return to Jamaica. I suspected at the time he’d paid her off. But he said I wasn’t to contact her — I was to let her go and not make a fuss.’

  Pyke waited for a moment and listened to the wind roaring outside. ‘So he knew about you and her?’

  Alefounder shrugged. ‘He never actually said so, but I suspect he knew.’

  A short silence passed between them. ‘Tell me what you did when you first heard that Mary was dead; that she’d been murdered.’

  ‘Silas came to see me again. He told me there’d been a terrible tragedy. He explained that he’d put Mary up in a guest house on the Ratcliff Highway while she waited for her ship. He said he didn’t know exactly what had happened; all he knew was that she’d been strangled and that her body had been found somewhere near by. He told me he blamed himself. He was very upset.’

  Pyke made a mental note of exactly what Alefounder had said. ‘And what did you think?’

  ‘What do you mean, what did I think?’ A slight element of frustration had crept into Alefounder’s tone.

  ‘For a start, did you believe him?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I have believed him?’

  ‘Two murders in a week, both victims living under the same roof. That didn’t strike you as coincidental?’

  ‘By then I knew the police had arrested the valet for Bedford’s murder. I didn’t see the two as being connected.’

  ‘What you mean is that Silas Malvern ordered you to keep your mouth shut.’

  ‘He made me see that doing nothing was in my best interest. His, too. He didn’t want to read about his family in the newspapers or have to answer some policeman’s questions.’

  Pyke considered what Alefounder had just told him. It made a certain amount of sense. Preserving one’s good name was just about the most important thing a man like Malvern could do.

  ‘So when I turned up in your office and made those accusations, you went directly to see Silas Malvern.’

  Alefounder nodded. ‘He told me I’d have to make a statement to the police but that he could arrange it so that the questions would be of a friendly nature. Above all, he said, I wasn’t to admit ever having known or seen Mary.’ He hesitated, thinking about what he’d just said. ‘I was grateful to him, I suppose. For obvious reasons, I didn’t want to become embroiled in the murder investigation.’

  Pyke looked around the room and rubbed his eyes; he was tired from the long walk but he knew he had to remain alert. ‘Did Malvern tell you that Elizabeth had sailed for the Caribbean?’

  ‘Actually, she didn’t make the journey in the end,’ Alefounder said, staring down at his boots.

  That stopped Pyke in his tracks. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I received a letter from her saying that she’d intended to make the trip because she wanted to be the one who broke the news to Charles, but that she’d fallen ill at the last moment. For some reason, she didn’t want her father to know that she hadn’t made the journey, but she begged me to break the bad news to Charles.’

  ‘You know Elizabeth Malvern, then?’

  ‘She and I were acquainted at one time.’ Alefounder brushed his hand against his chin, as he did when he was lying.

  ‘ Acquainted? Is that what they’re calling it these days?’ When Alefounder didn’t seem to have understood Pyke’s remark, he added, ‘Your wife told me that Elizabeth Malvern was your mistress for about two years.’

  That almost finished him. ‘You’ve talked to my wife?’ The sense of betrayal in his voice was hard to miss.

  ‘She was very forthcoming about the affair.’

  Alefounder shook his head as though he couldn’t quite fathom what was happening to him.

  ‘Your wife also told me about your charitable work for the Vice Society. Elizabeth’s, too.’ Pyke hesitated. ‘Of course, given this, it seems a little obtuse that Elizabeth should be involved with a man like Jemmy Crane.’

  This time the sugar trader’s expression was more circumspect. ‘What she does with her life is up to her.’

  ‘I take it you don’t approve of her choice of lover?’

  ‘When we were still together, she expressed an interest in the work the society performs and I encouraged her to join.’

  ‘And what precisely do you do for the society?’

  ‘I sit on the board and help raise money for the society’s work. As for Elizabeth, you’d have to ask her. We haven’t had much contact in the past two years.’

  ‘But you must hear of what she does?’

  The trader sighed, clearly agitated, and shook his head. ‘Field work, as far as I’m aware. She latched on to a man called Samuel Ticknor, I believe. I’m told he encourages fallen women to find more respectable occupations.’

  ‘Does the name Lucy Luckins mean anything to you?’

  ‘Luckins?’ He appeared to give it some thought. ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Her corpse was found in the Thames.’

  ‘I hope you’re not suggesting that I had something to do with it,’ Alefounder said, rediscovering some of the pomposity he’d displayed in London.

  Pyke shrugged. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, that you and Elizabeth should play any kind of role in the Vice Society when your own sexual predilections are so…’

  This was almost too much for Alefounder to bear. His neck swelled with colour and his fists clenched into tight, white ba
lls. ‘I’ll not be slandered in such a vile manner. I might have done wrong by not coming forward with information about Mary…’

  But Pyke was not interested in Alefounder’s outrage, whether it was heartfelt or not. He left the trader slumped in a chair and went to find Charles Malvern.

  After an hour or so of fruitless searching, Pyke found the young planter wandering on the front lawn. He was muttering to himself, staring up into the dark void, seemingly oblivious to the torrential rain and fierce winds. Pyke tried to put his arm around him and guide him back into the house but Malvern pushed him away and continued to mutter to himself. He stumbled and fell, laughing drunkenly as he did so. Just at the last moment Pyke turned around and saw the plank of wood a fraction of a second before it cracked him around the head, so that in the end he wasn’t sure whether someone had swung it at him or whether he’d become another victim of the storm. He fell to the ground and passed into unconsciousness.

  NINETEEN

  Pyke came around just after dawn the following morning, face down in a drainage ditch, his head throbbing with pain. The air around him was cool and clear and filled with birdsong. The clouds had passed too, and the sky was a mass of intense blue, dazzling to the naked eye. There was a soft breeze, laced with the scent of lily, ginger, jasmine and honeysuckle, and all across the lawn, and on the track leading down the hill towards the stables, pools of water created by the rains shimmered in the early morning light.

  On another day it might have been the perfect morning, but the devastation wrought by the storm was apparent wherever you looked. The great house lay in ruins; part of the roof had been torn off and dumped across the surrounding land and the wall at one end of the building had buckled and collapsed. Much of the furniture lay scattered across the lawn, splintered and upended; bookcases were overturned like shipwrecks, their contents distributed to every corner of the gardens; tables and chairs were marooned in flower beds, torn pictures lying face down in pools of rainwater. The surrounding bush had been flattened and pulped by the wind and trees lay strewn across pathways, their roots having pulled up massive clumps of red earth. It was a strange, desolate scene, made even more eerie by the near-total silence. Nothing moved and no one answered Pyke’s calls. He looked for Malvern, Alefounder, Pemberton, Josephine and any of the house servants, but the whole place was deserted.