‘For what?’ It would have been hard for Pyke to hate himself any more than he did at that moment.
‘For finally being honest with me.’ As her eyes started to fill up again, she managed to say, ‘Could you leave me alone now, please?’
TWENTY-SIX
As part of an attempt by planners to tear down the ancient city and construct a modern metropolis of wide avenues and open public spaces, Trafalgar Square had been envisaged as the embodiment of Britain’s imperial might and as its centrepiece a column built of Portland stone upon which a statue of Nelson would one day sit was beginning to take shape. Pyke could see that, when completed, the square might be a pleasant place to pass the time, but in the middle of summer and with plumes of dust whipped up by the building work and the slow procession of omnibuses, drays, cabs, barrows and carriages moving between The Strand and the West End, it was about as disagreeable a spot as he could imagine.
While he waited, Pyke tried to think about his investigation; what he had found out and more importantly what he had missed. It pained him to realise he still didn’t know who had killed Mary Edgar or even why she had been killed. Different pieces of information were still pulling him in different directions. The fact that she had been staying in Bedford’s home at the behest of Charles Malvern and that Bedford, too, had been murdered suggested that the same man — or woman — had been responsible for both deaths. But there was also the question of Mary’s facial mutilation and how this replicated an incident that had taken place in Jamaica many years earlier involving Silas Malvern and his brother, Phillip. That had to be significant — the coincidence was too stark — but while a familial connection between Mary and Phillip Malvern seemed to offer a partial explanation, it still didn’t begin to explain why Lucy Luckins had been mutilated in a similar fashion.
Who or what linked Mary Edgar and Lucy Luckins?
The manner of their deaths was the same — they had been strangled and their eyeballs removed — but there the similarities ended. Lucy was poor, white and flirting with prostitution. Mary Edgar had good looks and a degree of security by dint of her connection to Bedford and Charles Malvern. Desperate and afraid, Lucy had turned to prostitution as a last resort while Mary had had to beat off a number of potential suitors.
The bells of St Martin’s-in-the-Field had just chimed midday when Pyke saw Tilling striding towards him, suited in black and wearing his matching stovepipe hat.
‘Let’s walk,’ Tilling said, his expression and demeanour devoid of any warmth.
Pyke started to say something but Tilling cut him off. ‘Are you out of your mind? Does the Great Fire mean anything to you? What you did was reckless and irresponsible and it put untold lives at risk — and for what? Did you achieve what you wanted or was it just to make yourself feel better?’
‘At least Crane isn’t going to be trading for a while.’ They continued for a few steps in silence. ‘Is that a problem for you?’
‘The problem is you, Pyke.’ Tilling turned to face him. ‘And the fact you don’t seem to accept that the law is the law. It’s a blunt instrument, I’ll grant you, but it’s all that separates us from anarchy.’
‘So you think what I did was wrong?’
‘The sanctity of private property is the bedrock of our legal system.’
‘Then arrest me,’ Pyke said, half joking.
That drew an irritated chuckle. ‘Oh, believe me, Mayne would like nothing better than to put you behind bars. But the only way an arrest warrant can be issued is if Crane makes an official complaint and at the moment no one seems to know where he is.’
‘So I’m still a free man?’
Tilling shrugged. ‘For the time being.’
As they walked down towards Haymarket, Pyke thought about Crane and the robbery he was planning. How was he planning to breach the Bank of England’s impregnable security? Was it possible to countenance such an action? In less than two days, Jerome Morel-Roux would hang before an expected crowd of fifty thousand. Before he’d gone to Jamaica, Bessie Daniels had whispered the valet’s name to him. Why? The only explanation Pyke could think of was that Bessie had overheard Crane mention that the robbery had been planned to coincide with the hanging. Still, he didn’t know this for certain and it paid not to jump to any conclusions.
‘The reason I wanted to see you is that I might have found out the whereabouts of Lord Bedford’s butler.’
Stopping, Pyke turned to face his erstwhile friend. If the butler admitted to knowing about Mary Edgar and the arrangement Bedford had struck with Charles Malvern, then they might be able to insist that the investigation into both murders be reopened. In any case it might be enough temporarily to halt the execution.
‘Can I come with you to talk to him?’
Tilling put his hand up to his eyes. ‘I’d rather do it on my own. But come around to the house tomorrow afternoon. I’ll have more news for you then.’
Pyke’s thoughts switched back to the robbery that Crane was, or might be, planning. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Is Mayne at all concerned by the prospect of fifty thousand men and women, mostly the poorest of the poor, pouring into the city on Sunday night and Monday morning?’
‘Concerned in what sense?’
‘I don’t know.’ Pyke hesitated, trying to gather his thoughts. ‘That the crowd might be infiltrated by radicals intent on pursuing their own cause?’
This time Tilling’s face creased with worry. ‘Have you heard something to this effect?’
Pyke shrugged. ‘If I were you, I’d ask the Bank of England about additional security provisions taken in light of the crowds expected to gather on Monday morning.’
That did nothing to ease Tilling’s concern. ‘Why the Bank of England? What exactly have you heard?’
‘Just ask.’ Pyke looked at him and waited. ‘Like you said, we can talk about it tomorrow afternoon at your house.’
He watched Tilling walk off in the direction of Whitehall.
About an hour later, Pyke found Samuel Ticknor in a coffee house on St John Street, just around the corner from the offices of the Vice Society. He was a timid, bald-headed man with rancid breath and a punctilious manner that put Pyke in mind of a headmaster or clergyman. Indeed, there was a well-thumbed copy of the King James Bible next to his empty plate. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who’d knowingly set out to profit from the exploitation of his charges.
‘Perhaps you might enlighten me as to the precise nature of your enquiries, sir? I am a busy man.’ He checked his gold pocket watch.
‘You’ve been a difficult man to find.’
‘A private matter demanded my attention in the West Country. But I’m here now, so perhaps you might be so bold as to tell me why this matter couldn’t wait until next week.’
‘Do you remember a woman called Lucy Luckins?’
‘Luckins, you say?’
‘From Shadwell.’
That seemed to make the difference. ‘Ah, indeed. Lucy. If I’m not mistaken, I helped to find her work as a seamstress last year. Not the most glamorous or well-paid occupation, I’ll admit, but a good deal better for her soul than walking the streets.’ He gave the Bible next to him a supercilious tap. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Do you know Elizabeth Malvern?’
Ticknor’s expression darkened. ‘I used to be acquainted with her.’
Pyke felt his throat tighten. ‘What was the precise nature of your acquaintance?’
‘She used to raise funds for the society and on occasion she would accompany me on field visits.’
‘Did she ever accompany you when you visited Lucy Luckins?’
‘I can’t remember exactly.’
‘Then think.’
‘Excuse me, sir, but you’re going to have to tell me the precise nature of your interest in Miss Luckins…’
Pyke cut him off. ‘She’s dead. She was strangled and then both of her eyes were cut out.’
Ashen-faced, Ticknor
immediately retched on to the table. A spool of saliva hung from his chin.
‘I’ll ask you again. Did Elizabeth Malvern accompany you when you visited her?’ Ticknor stared at Pyke and nodded. ‘Miss Malvern was the one who found her work as a seamstress.’
Pyke found himself gripping the edge of the table. ‘Just now, you said she used to raise funds for the society?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not any more?’
‘She was asked to leave.’
‘ Why? ’
‘On account of the company she kept.’
Pyke slammed his fist down on the table. ‘What, precisely, do you mean by that?’
‘A gentleman. A particular gentleman.’ Ticknor’s hands were trembling.
‘Was his name Jemmy Crane, by any chance?’
Ticknor’s mouth fell open. ‘How did you know?’
‘And there’s no possibility you could have been mistaken about the nature of their association?’
‘I saw them with my own eyes.’
‘When?’
‘Some time in the spring. April, perhaps.’ Ticknor’s stare was solid, even defiant. ‘I saw them, sir. I saw them embrace.’
When Pyke arrived at Pitts Lane Mews, someone had evidently beaten him to it. The back door had been kicked open and, inside, shards of broken glass and crockery covered the downstairs floor. Upstairs, wardrobes had been overturned and sheets had been ripped off the beds. In the kitchen, he paused at the table they had sat around the previous night. The table they’d fucked on. The room, the whole house, smelled of her.
So Elizabeth Malvern was Jemmy Crane’s mistress. It was just as Field had said. Field and Ticknor.
But what did that mean?
What if Elizabeth had put Lucy Luckins in touch with Crane rather than finding her a job as a seamstress?
And what had happened in the intervening period — from the time Elizabeth and Lucy met to the moment Lucy’s strangled corpse had been hauled out of the river by Gilbert Meeson?
Why had Lucy’s eyeballs been cut from their sockets just like Mary’s?
Pyke’s thoughts turned to Phillip Malvern. Somehow the two matters were related; they had to be. For a while, he sat at the kitchen table trying to remember all the bits of information about Phillip he’d come across. Eventually he came back to what the bone collector had said: He likes his women dark. But where would he find a black woman on the Ratcliff Highway? Pyke thought about Eliza Craddock’s brothel and about Jane Shaw, who had been abandoned because she’d contracted syphilis. It was a remote possibility but it was a possibility none the less. He left the house via the front door. At first Pyke thought that Jane Shaw was dead, but then she coughed and turned over, perhaps disturbed by the light from his lantern. Down below, in another part of the building, he heard raised voices and then a scream. He stepped into the tiny, airless room and waited. The air stank of faeces and death. Her eyes opened slightly and she tried to sit up. He thought he saw her smile but it could have been a grimace.
‘You came back.’ This time the disease had spread from her face to every part of her body. There was almost nothing left of her.
‘How could I keep away?’
That seemed to make her laugh, but as she did so something caught in her throat and she coughed. ‘If I’d known you were coming, I would have combed my hair.’ She touched her bald head.
He sat down next to her and took her hand. It felt like a skeleton’s. ‘I wanted to ask you a question.’
‘Lucky you didn’t wait too much longer.’ She grimaced each time she tried to move and Pyke guessed that her back was covered with sores. ‘You find the one who killed the mulatto?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Is that why you here?’
‘In part.’ Pyke waited. ‘When I was last here, you said you could remember the faces of all the men you’d ever slept with.’
‘I ’member. So?’
‘Were you ever visited by a blind man?’
‘Phillip.’
Pyke didn’t try to hide his excitement. ‘That’s right. Did you see him often?’
‘While I was still working at Craddock’s. He was a little mad but he was also gentle and considerate, not like most of ’em.’
‘Mad in what sense?’
‘He believed there were evil spirits trying to harm him.’
Pyke thought about what he’d learned about Phillip Malvern in Jamaica. ‘Did he ever talk to you about what he did, where he lived?’
‘He scavenged the sewers, reckoned he could make a living from it, too. That’s why they called him Filthy.’ She tried to smile. ‘You could smell it on him, too, but I didn’t mind. Better that he was gentle.’
‘Did he say anything else?’
‘No, not really. He wasn’t much of a talker, to be honest. Is he in trouble?’
‘He might be.’ Pyke waited. ‘I need to find him. It’s important. Do you know where he lives?’
‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘Or where he went to scavenge?’ Pyke waited. ‘He sold rats to a landlord in Saffron Hill.’
Jane tried to move and grimaced again. ‘He did mention this sewer or tunnel he found under the City…’
‘Yes?’
Jane closed her eyes. ‘He told me he found a barrel of wine down there once. Said you could walk into it from the Thames at low tide underneath Dowgate Wharf.’
As he moved away, she took his hand and tried to squeeze it. ‘You can’t leave me like this, Pyke.’
‘I have to go. I’ll come back, though. I promise.’
‘I meant, you can’t leave me like this. I want you to finish it. I’ve asked other folk but they’re all too afraid…’ She motioned up towards the ceiling.
‘Eternal damnation.’
‘I was thinking you might be different.’
‘I was damned a long time ago.’ Pyke looked into her pale eyes. ‘You want me to end your life?’
‘Take my pillow, put it over my mouth. It won’t take more than a few seconds. I can’t go on like this any longer.’
‘Is that what you really want?’
Jane nodded. ‘I’m so tired, in such pain.’
‘What you’re asking me to do,’ Pyke said, thinking about it, ‘some would consider it to be a mortal sin.’
‘I ain’t said my prayers for years now, if that’s what you’re asking me.’
‘And you’re ready to go?’
She produced a bottle of gin from beside the mattress. ‘You’ll have a last drink with me, won’t you?’
In the end she was so weak he had to help her hold the bottle to her lips. She sipped at the clear liquid like a suckling baby. Pyke took the bottle, put it to his mouth and drank until he needed a breath.
‘The funny thing is, I used to think I’d make something of my life.’ Jane looked around the dingy room and shook her head. ‘Everything I had, I’ve bartered away or it’s been stolen.’
‘We come into this world with nothing, we leave it with nothing.’ For some reason, Pyke found himself thinking about Felix.
She touched his hand and tried to squeeze it. ‘You’re a good man.’
They stared at one another for a few moments. ‘Are you quite sure you’re ready?’
‘Living here, like this,’ Jane smiled sadly, ‘I been ready for a while now.’
Pyke cupped the back of her head in his hand, pulled out her pillow and helped her lie back down on the mattress.
‘You actually going to do it?’ Jane seemed scared all of a sudden.
‘Only if you want me to.’
Pyke sat there and watched while she considered the decision. ‘I want you to,’ she said, eventually. Her eyes were as dry as a tinderbox.
‘You’re sure?’ Suddenly the pillow felt heavier than a bag of anvils.
‘Either do it or leave,’ she said, a hardness in her tone. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and whispered, ‘But whatever you decide, I’m ready.’
Even thoug
h she’d been expecting it, and indeed had asked for it, the moment that he forced the pillow down against her bony face, her body seemed to jolt with surprise and after that, in spite of her weakened condition, she battled, arms and legs convulsing until there was no more fight left in her.
Putting the pillow down, Pyke looked around the room. Apart from the empty gin bottle, there was nothing.
Like the Fleet, which until the thirteenth or fourteenth century had been a navigable river that cut through Alsatia, Holborn and Saffron Hill before rising in Hampstead, Walbrook had once flowed into the Thames near Southwark Bridge, having followed a path from Moorfields directly through the City of London. Pyke was told this by a mudlark who showed him to the entrance of the tunnel. The river had long since been built over and had actually been reconstructed as a sewer, in order to transport the city’s soil directly into the Thames. It had served this function, of course, for as long as people had lived in the City.
The tide was out and the smell emanating from the mudbanks was horrendous but, as the mudlark gleefully informed him, it was nothing compared to the stink inside the tunnel. The two of them clambered down under Dowgate Wharf and the mudlark directed Pyke to a small, dark entrance directly under the creaking wooden edifice. ‘That’s you, cock,’ he said, accepting the coin Pyke gave him, then added, ‘You got a stick to beat off the rats?’
Alone, Pyke checked to make sure he still had his sheath knife, a handkerchief to cover his mouth, a nosegay, a lantern, a ball of twine, his jemmy and an old pair of gloves. Pinching his nostrils with the nosegay and tying the handkerchief around his mouth, he picked up the lantern and moved towards the tunnel entrance. A trickle of brown soil was emanating from the tunnel and the ground was marshy underfoot. At the entrance itself, he held up the lantern and peered inside. The walls and ceilings of the sewer had been built using bricks, and it was about as tall as he was and as wide as a brougham. He stepped into the tunnel and almost gagged, through the handkerchief, from the vileness of the stink.
‘Phillip?’
He walked another few yards along the tunnel, trying to ignore both the stink and the feeling of entrapment that being in such a confined space induced, then hesitated. Holding up the lantern, he peered down at the thick soil blackening his knee-high boots. It was difficult to imagine how a man might live in such a place. Ahead, he saw his first rat, but it scuttled off in the opposite direction. The mudlark had mischievously told him that sewer rats liked to attack humans but Pyke had dismissed this as fantastical. Yet alone in this damp, foul-smelling tunnel, he found himself stepping more cautiously through the sludge, trying not to step on or disturb any vermin.
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