Kill-Devil and Water

by Andrew Pepper

  ‘Honestly? No, I don’t.’

  ‘Then why did he plead guilty?’

  Pyke stared into her dark eyes and noticed tiny yellow flecks spotted around her irises. ‘I think he’s trying to shoulder the blame for someone else. But I don’t know why.’

  ‘Really?’ She didn’t flinch or turn away. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Love, misplaced loyalty, who knows?’

  She let his words linger between them for a few moments. ‘But what are you hoping to gain by finding the man who really killed her?’

  ‘Who said it was a man?’

  She reached for the rum bottle and again refilled both of their glasses. ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she said, taking a sip of the rum.

  ‘Are you asking me why I care about Mary’s death?’

  Elizabeth just nodded.

  ‘It’s a job I agreed to do. I like to see things through to the end.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘You think I should just let her rot in an unmarked grave?’

  She shook her head and gave him a solemn look. ‘Honestly, I think what you’re doing is entirely to your credit.’ It was a bland statement, in a way, but when he looked at her, there were tears in her eyes.

  She reached out across the table and squeezed his hand. He let it linger there for longer than he should have. All the rum he’d drunk had left him light headed. Elizabeth, on the other hand, seemed almost sober.

  ‘A while ago, I asked about daguerreotypes,’ he said, noticing the way the curve of her neck accentuated the shape of her chin.

  ‘Ah, back to the questions ...’ She withdrew her hand and offered him a good-natured smile.

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  She shrugged. ‘If I’m honest, I quite like the fact that you’re interested in me. I’ve been so starved of human company ...’

  ‘Daguerreotypes.’ In Jamaica, Charles Malvern had told Pyke that his interest in the new medium had been fired by his sister.

  ‘It’s a pastime. Other women like to press flowers.’

  ‘But how did you first develop an interest in it?’

  ‘I read about it in the newspaper. It sounded interesting.’ Absent-mindedly, she coiled a loose strand of hair around her finger. ‘I’m not the spoiled, stupid planter’s daughter you think I am.’

  ‘Who said I thought that?’ Pyke took out the copperplate of Bessie Daniels and pushed it across the table. He needed to steer their conversation back towards more neutral matters. ‘I don’t know what your dealings with Crane are but he’s learned about daguerreotypes from someone - for some reason I suspected it might be you. While you might just take pictures of flowers and plants, you’ll see he’s been quick to exploit the medium for his own ends.’

  She studied the image, then pushed it back across the table. The disgusted look on her face seemed genuine. ‘You think I taught him how to do that?’

  ‘I do.’ Pyke waited.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘God, whatever must you think of me?’

  Refusing to be sidetracked, Pyke added, ‘Her name’s Bessie Daniels. A brothel madam called Eliza Craddock sold her to Crane for five guineas.’ He took the daguerreotype and put it back into his coat pocket.

  ‘Is she ...’ Elizabeth couldn’t bring herself to finish the question.

  ‘Is she dead?’ Pyke saw her pupils dilate slightly. ‘I don’t know.’ He wanted to be angry at her - at anyone - but somehow he couldn’t quite manage it.

  ‘I’m sorry I ever met him.’

  Suddenly she looked exhausted, but Pyke wasn’t quite finished with his questions. ‘And Samuel Ticknor?’

  ‘I don’t think I know him.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘Should I?’

  ‘He’s an agent for the Vice Society.’

  ‘I’m still not sure,’ she said, her brow furrowed in thought.

  ‘It’s not a trick question,’ Pyke said, allowing his frustration to show. ‘Either you know him or you don’t.’

  ‘I haven’t been into the field for more than a year and I’m afraid that my memory for names isn’t good. Perhaps I might recognise him.’ Her expression seemed so sincere that he was disarmed.

  ‘Do you remember meeting a woman called Lucy Luckins?’

  ‘No. Who is she?’

  ‘Just another girl fallen on hard times.’ For some reason, Pyke didn’t want to tell her that Lucy was also dead.

  ‘I might know her. But then again I might not.’ She shrugged apologetically. ‘I meet so many people from all walks of life ...’

  ‘But none you actually like?’ he asked, softening a little. He was beginning to sense her weariness and frustration.

  ‘But none I actually like,’ she said, repeating his line and smiling. ‘Or almost none.’ This time she looked directly into his eyes. ‘You didn’t come here only to ask me questions, did you?’ She finished her rum and waited for Pyke to do likewise.

  They were sitting across the table from one another so she couldn’t see his erection. She’d answered his questions with patience and humour but he also knew that that didn’t mean she’d told the truth.

  ‘You’re not married, are you?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘My wife died five years ago.’ For some reason Pyke wanted her to know this; wanted her to know the truth. In part, it felt as if they’d both been playing a game, toying with each other, and that this was the first honest thing he’d said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She bit her lip. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

  The warmth from the rum had spread to his stomach. ‘I’m glad you did.’ Tentatively he put his hand out across the table.

  She reached across the table and their fingers brushed together. Was he still trying to elicit information from her? To expose her as a liar? In an instant the game had changed and suddenly he was unsure of himself.

  ‘Pyke?’ Elizabeth stared at him, clear eyed, absolutely serious.

  ‘Yes?’ The word seemed to get stuck in his throat.

  Their fingers coiled together. He squeezed. She squeezed. The candle that had been glowing on the table next to them flickered and then burned out. He heard her chair move and felt her pull his hand towards her. Standing, he groped for her face, touching her nose, her lips, her eyes, her hair, their mouths meeting somewhere over the middle of the table, lips, tongues, teeth urgently seeking their counterpart, each touch, each messy kiss, firing rather than satiating his need, until all he could do was climb up on to the table and pull her under him. But she seemed just as hungry as him, more so if that were possible, and she wasn’t going to be dictated to; she wouldn’t let him rip off her dress, and whenever his hands ventured near her back, she grunted slightly and shooed him away. Still, as she guided him into her, Pyke was too far gone to tell whether her sudden gasp was genuine or not; the intensity of the moment was almost too much for him to bear.

  Later, after she had led him up to her bedroom and they had made love again, this time more slowly and somehow even more pleasurably, they lay there in silence. She was still wearing her dress and had just hitched up it while they made love, repelling all of his attempts to remove it.

  ‘Will you stay with me tonight?’

  Pyke closed his eyes, the guilt now beginning to wash over him. ‘I can’t.’

  Next to him her body hardly moved.

  ‘Are you angry with me, that I have to go?’

  To his surprise, she laughed. ‘You have your life, I have mine.’

  Her face looked so beautiful and guileless. ‘Elizabeth?’

  ‘Yes, my darling?’

  Pyke wanted to say something about the evening, the sex, but he couldn’t find the right words. ‘Nothing.’

  But she squeezed his hand anyway and whispered, ‘I know.’

  He washed himself with soap and water at the basin in the kitchen and dressed quickly. When he returned to the bedroom, she hadn’t moved. He went over to the bed and kissed her on the mouth.

  ‘Will I see you
again?’ Elizabeth asked, as he prepared to leave. When he didn’t answer, she waited for a moment and added, ‘Whatever happens, don’t think badly of me. I don’t think I could bear it if you thought badly of me.’

  It was late, after eleven, by the time the hackney carriage dropped him outside his house and he found Jo waiting up for him in the front room.

  ‘Some policemen were here earlier.’ She was wearing a white nightdress and a matching gown tied at the waist.

  ‘They say what they wanted?’ He was wondering whether she could sense the guilt he was feeling.

  ‘Your friend, or he claimed to be your friend, told you to meet him tomorrow noon at Trafalgar Square, in front of the National Gallery.’

  ‘Fitzroy Tilling?’

  ‘That’s the name he gave.’

  They stood there for a while contemplating one another without speaking. Pyke could feel his perspiration.

  ‘Is this how it’s going to be?’ Her arms were folded tight to her body and her face was hot with anger.

  ‘Is this how what’s going to be?’

  ‘Us, you.’ She took a step towards him and seemed to sense or smell something. ‘Where have you been, Pyke?’

  Pyke hesitated just a little too long. ‘I’ve been looking for a missing prostitute.’

  She stood there for a moment, not knowing whether to challenge him or not. Then she moved away and shook her head. ‘This isn’t going to work.’

  ‘Look, it’s late and we’re both tired. Maybe we should talk in the morning.’ Pyke tried to give her a hug but she saw it coming and backed away.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about this for a while, Pyke. In fact, I haven’t thought about much else since you returned from Jamaica.’ She held up her hand to stop him from interrupting. ‘Let me finish, please. If you don’t, I might never say what I need to say.’ For a moment, he thought she might cry. ‘I’ll continue here until the end of this month, while I look for another position. But I can’t go on like this, not knowing what you feel for me, if it’s anything more than gratitude; wondering what my place is in this house, and worrying about my future and whether I have one.’

  Pyke felt a sharp stab of shame and thought about all his declarations of intent to her - and how by making them, by articulating what he thought they both wanted, he’d actually believed he could will a life for them both into existence.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Jo. Is there any way you could be persuaded to change your mind?’ He tried to imagine life without her but couldn’t.

  ‘That’s just the problem, Pyke. You don’t know what to say because you don’t know what you want.’

  ‘Tell me what to say and I’ll say it. For my sake and for Felix’s sake. Please, Jo, I’m begging you. I’ll get down on my hands and knees if I have to. Stay until the New Year and make a decision then. If we can make it until January, maybe we do have a future.’

  ‘As nursemaid to your child or mistress in your bed?’

  The bluntness of her question took him by surprise and Pyke didn’t have an immediate answer.

  ‘For me, it’s simple,’ she said. ‘Unfortunately, I’m in love with you. I probably have been for a long, long time, but I’ve never dared to acknowledge it even to myself. But what happened between us before you left for Jamaica unleashed those feelings in a way I couldn’t have expected.’ She paused and her eyes filled with tears. ‘These past few months have been the most unhappy, the most miserable, of my life, and I just can’t do it any more. I can’t just put my feelings back into a box and pretend they don’t exist.’

  Guilt, shame, affection, respect. Pyke felt all those things. He wanted to take Jo in his arms and tell her that he loved her; wipe away her tears and convince her that they had a future together. He wanted to do it for Felix’s sake, of course, but also for his own. For he knew that a part of him wanted the things that she could give him: a happy, stable domestic life. But he could still feel the taste of Elizabeth Malvern’s tongue in his mouth and recall the way it had made him feel, and he knew that in time he would hurt Jo more than he already had, and that he would keep on hurting her.

  ‘I’m sorry, I really am sorry.’

  That riled her. ‘What exactly are you sorry about?’

  He thought about Emily; how he’d been more or less faithful to her throughout their time together. ‘That I don’t love you in the same way.’

  Perhaps Jo had been expecting it; perhaps she’d even been trying to provoke him into admitting it. But the baldness of his confession still made her gasp. She stared at him, her eyes wide open, trying to make sense of what he’d just said, before wiping her nose on the sleeve of her dress and smiling. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

  ‘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.