The Last Days of Newgate pm-1

  The Last Days of Newgate

  ( Pyke mystery - 1 )

  Andrew Pepper

  Andrew Pepper

  The Last Days of Newgate

  [T]he gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation.

  NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, The Prince

  PART I

  London, England

  FEBRUARY 1829

  ONE

  A metallic glint preceded the thrust of a knife blade, as a voice, a female voice, shouted his name.

  ‘Pyke.’

  It may have saved his life.

  The blade drew blood on his neck, a nick rather than a wound, and, turning like a whip, he stared into the hate-filled eyes of his attacker. Michael Flynn lunged at him again but this time he swayed backwards and avoided the blade’s arching loop, steadying himself before taking a grip of the Irishman’s wrist and snapping it sideways in a clean jerk that may well have broken bone. Flynn’s shriek confirmed his pain and, more importantly for Pyke, the knife clattered harmlessly on to the taproom’s sawdusted floor. Pyke released his assailant’s limp wrist and surveyed the mass of hostile faces assembled in the taproom of the Blue Dog tavern. He saw the back of her bonnet, bobbing as she hurried for the door, but she was too far away to be stopped. Later, he could not be sure he had not seen her face as well, but no clear image lodged in his mind. Momentarily he considered going after her, but he had more pressing issues to address. Though wounded, Flynn remained a dangerous adversary and Pyke wasted no time in retrieving the knife from the floor and pressing the blade against the receiver’s throat. His fee for sending his former associate to certain death on the gallows would be a mere

  ten guineas. It would have made practical sense to slit the man’s throat in the alley outside the tavern and leave him for the resurrectionists but, whatever else he was, Pyke was not an assassin.

  Instead he delivered the papist thief to his Bow Street offices and roughly pushed him into the felons’ room, ignoring the man’s threats to expose him.

  It may have seemed incongruous, to some, that, only a few hours later, Pyke was being transported in an open carriage through the manicured grounds of an English aristocrat whose wife had claimed ancestry with the first earl of Essex, but he was neither amused nor unsettled by having to move between different worlds. Nor was he concerned by the inequalities such a difference drew attention to. He would leave such thoughts to the politicians: the blustering Whig aristocrats who spoke about freedom and responsibility in public and abused their servants in private, and Tory landowners who cared nothing about the hardships their wealth and privilege created for others.

  Pyke had no time for radical sentiment, nor was he what one might call a monarchist. But he managed to amuse himself, if only for a moment, with the agreeable thought of a mob from the Blue Dog overrunning Lord Edmonton’s country home and hunting him with scythes and axes.

  The carriage, a new, lighter two-wheeled cabriolet, had covered the treacherous terrain from Bow Street and north through Hackney and Homerton in less time than a short-stop stagecoach. Yet it had left him exposed to the elements and Pyke cursed Edmonton for insisting they meet at Hambledon Hall rather than at one of his town houses. That, and the inclement weather, redoubled Pyke’s determination to charge Edmonton at least twice the figure the old man intended to offer him.

  As the afternoon rain began to clear, the old Elizabethan hall became visible, its crenellated stone walls and Gothic, semi-fortified tower reminders of an era long gone. Still, Pyke was disappointed by the distinctly shabby interior. There were none of the excesses that he had been expecting. Lit dimly by gas lamps and candles, the entrance hall had the feel of an empty tomb. Pyke reluctantly allowed one of the servants to take his heavy coat and was informed that Edmonton would be down to greet him in due course. Etiquette demanded that Pyke remain where he was, and so he unhesitatingly made his way through large doors into the Great Hall, an unappealing room cluttered with dark furniture and adorned with a gallery of grim-faced ancestral portraits. Ornately carved wooden brackets held up the heraldic panels of the ceiling. In the distance Pyke heard the soft notes of a piano and followed the sounds through another smaller set of doors, along a corridor and to the threshold of a lounge room warmed by a fire.

  From the doorway, and without drawing attention to his presence, he watched Emily Blackwood, Lord Edmonton’s only progeny. Pyke followed her fingers as they stroked the piano’s keys and noted a contradiction between her expression, fixed in concentration, and her body, which moved in time with the rhythm of what she was playing.

  She wore an embroidered muslin dress that enhanced her delicate frame. Her dark hair was gathered in a simple comb and offset her pale skin. He admired her fine looks as someone might appreciate a painting by Turner, an object that was pleasing to the eye but ultimately bland. Far better than Turner, for Pyke, was Hogarth, with his scenes of despair and violence. Better still was Hieronymus Bosch; those phantasmagoric images of human suffering made him feel, at once violated and aroused. In short, there was something too virtuous about Emily Blackwood, an element that shone from within her and made her not just unobtainable but somehow too perfect. He wondered whether she might crumble or snap into pieces, should anyone try to fuck her.

  Though reluctant to spoil the moment, he feigned a cough. She stopped playing and looked up at him, startled and then angry. They had met once before when he had last performed a service for her father; however, he could not tell whether she recognised him or not. She worked for the philanthropist Elizabeth Fry, a woman of some public esteem, who had long campaigned for improved conditions in Newgate prison.

  ‘I would tell you to make yourself at home, but clearly you have already followed such advice,’ she said, without moving from behind the piano.

  ‘You are a very fine pianist.’ Pyke stepped into the room and ignored her indignation.

  ‘You fancy yourself as an expert?’ she asked, sceptically.

  ‘At first, I thought you were playing a piece by Mozart, one of his piano concertos perhaps. But then I considered the way you carried yourself, as though you were trying to hold something back against your will, and it made me revise my opinion.’

  Her anger abated and a curious expression spread across her face. ‘You presume to know me, and what I played, perhaps a little too well.’

  ‘Last month, I saw this German fellow, Felix Mendelssohn, give a fine rendition of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto in town. What you were playing reminded me a little of him.’

  ‘Mr Pyke, you are clearly more cultured than your reputation suggests.’

  ‘Oh? And what does my reputation suggest?’ He tried to hide his satisfaction that she had remembered his name.

  ‘When people talk of you, they do so with a reverence that borders, I would say, on fear.’

  ‘And you imagine that I seek to encourage such a reputation? Or deserve it?’ He was wearing a shirt with a collar to hide the cut he had received from Flynn’s blade.

  This time she smiled a little. ‘I would imagine it serves your own interests quite well.’

  ‘My interests as a thief-taker?’

  ‘I have heard that only one of those words describes what you are, Mr Pyke. Or what you do.’

  He couldn’t stop himself laughing. He looked at her again, approvingly this time. ‘You seem to know an awful lot about me, Miss Blackwood.’

  ‘I know you’re a Bow Street Runner but I have little idea of what Bow Street Runners are meant to do. I can see you’re confident to the point of vulgarity. I would guess your age to be
a little over thirty. I have heard other less agreeable rumours about your profession in general which I do not wish to dwell on. Beyond that, I have been blissfully unaware of your existence and intend to remain that way.’

  Emily Blackwood was, indeed, very pretty, but not as pretty as she might have been had her dress been tattier, or her hair not so immaculately pinned up, or had she not worn her breeding so aggressively in the company of others.

  Pyke had been told he was handsome, although not in the suave if effete manner of an English gentleman. His thick black hair, curled in places, mutton-chop sideburns and swarthy olive skin suggested someone coarser, more readily associated with Continental peasants and bandits. A former lover, after she had been discarded, had described his lips as cruel and his pale grey eyes as lacking in sentiment. Another, while running the tips of her fingers suggestively across his bare chest, had commented that there was not an ounce of fat on him, although she too had delivered more disparaging remarks about his appearance after he had admitted growing bored of their affair.

  ‘I have heard something about your own good work, Miss Blackwood. Since Mrs Fry first visited Newgate there have been some important changes.’

  ‘It’s a shame that our interests largely concern the female prison, for otherwise you yourself might benefit from the reforms at some future point.’

  Pyke allowed her remark to pass. ‘Your fine looks belie a sharp intellect,’ he said, amiably. ‘But then your piano playing already revealed that fact.’ He was interrupted by the sound of raised voices and the urgent clip of heeled shoes striding across a wooden floor. Edmonton himself entered the room, wheezing like a wounded animal, followed by someone Pyke knew only by reputation; in the flesh, Edmonton’s brother William seemed frightened of his own shadow.

  ‘Dammit, Pyke, were you not told to wait in the entrance hall? Do you imagine I care to walk through my own home searching for hired help?’

  Pyke bowed his head. ‘Please accept my apologies. It was selfish of me to forget that such strenuous exercise might cause you discomfort.’ He detected a smile on Emily’s face.

  Edmonton’s bloodshot eyes narrowed. ‘As I am reminded that conversing in a manner above one’s station does not make one a gentleman.’

  Pyke let the insult pass. It was true he had worked hard to erase any lingering trace of the rookeries from his speech and was as comfortable holding forth with aristocrats as with the working poor of St Giles.

  ‘You seem agitated, Father.’ Emily’s demeanour belied her apparently sympathetic words. ‘What vexes you so?’

  ‘What vexes me?’ Edmonton, who was carrying a newspaper, glanced down at the front page. ‘ “The particular case of Catholic Emancipation will not be stated in detail. .” Pah. The cowards are afraid to, that’s why.’ He crumpled the newspaper and threw it into the fire. ‘It’s the consequence of handing over power to a military man and a turncoat industrialist with liberal blood running through his veins.’

  ‘Except liberal blood doesn’t extend to easing the hardships most ordinary people have to endure,’ Pyke said, looking across at Emily. ‘And the idle rich remain idly rich.’

  ‘What poppycock,’ Edmonton said, wiping spit from his chin. ‘You sound like a damn Jacobin.’

  ‘Or worse still, a reformer,’ Emily said, playfully. ‘Excuse me for being presumptuous, Mr Pyke, but perhaps you might enlighten us as to your own political convictions.’

  ‘The word “conviction” implies I have a firm opinion on such matters, one way or the other.’

  ‘You would like us to believe you are entirely without conviction?’ Her eyebrows were raised.

  Pyke smiled as best he could. ‘I think tradition should be upheld only when under attack from reformers, and reform should be upheld only when under attack from traditionalists. Apart from that, the business of politics is best undertaken by those of us who seem to believe our goal as human beings is a selfless one, rather than to serve our own ambitions.’

  ‘How delightfully cynical.’

  ‘What I mean is I have no politics myself and am happy to leave such business to men of your father’s. . abilities.’

  Edmonton accepted the compliment without apparently detecting its irony. ‘That’s enough of such pleasantries. Make yourself scarce, girl. The menfolk have some important matters to discuss.’ He rearranged his white waistcoat, revealing buckskin breeches that were stretched so tightly over his belly it seemed as though they might split at any moment.

  ‘Please excuse me, Mr Pyke, I have some flowers to press,’ Emily said, smiling mischievously. ‘But I have no doubt our paths will cross again.’ She collected herself to depart. ‘Until they do, I bid you farewell and hope you have a pleasant trip back to the city.’ She glanced out of the window. ‘It is such a ghastly day.’ Turning to Edmonton, Emily added, ‘Father.’

  Edmonton muttered something inaudible and shook his head.

  As a Bow Street Runner, Pyke worked for two magistrates, Sir Richard Fox and his second-in-command Brownlow Vines, who both presided over the courtroom at Bow Street and oversaw the operations of the Runners. The Runners were the capital’s de facto police force; foot patrols roamed the city streets as far east as the Ratcliffe highway, while the horse patrols covered an even wider area stretching as far north as Enfield. In his ten years as a Runner, Pyke had served on both patrols, though he had more quickly taken to the latter, in spite of the showy uniform — a blue greatcoat over a red waistcoat and spurred Wellington boots. Chasing highwaymen and livestock thieves on horseback, armed with pistols and truncheons, across rugged country terrain had been eminently preferable to patrolling the city’s back alleys on foot. Now, however, Pyke was employed almost exclusively as a thief-taker and as a recoverer of stolen goods. Under Sir Richard’s instructions, his job was to arrest those malefactors accused of crimes as various as murder on the one hand and embezzlement on the other, and deliver them to Bow Street. But part of his job was also to provide a service to well-heeled clients who had been victims of crime, usually robberies. If he successfully recovered what had been stolen, Pyke would be paid a finder’s fee. Two years earlier, Pyke had performed such a service for Edmonton, whose Belgravia town house had been relieved of six thousand pounds’ worth of jewellery and bonds. On that occasion, Pyke had orchestrated the return of all the stolen articles, and had earned a fee of three hundred guineas.

  What Edmonton did not know was that, in collaboration with another Runner who had a personal score to settle with the aristocrat, he had executed the robbery.

  Edmonton introduced his brother, and Pyke remembered he was a banker. His double-breasted jacket and trousers were cut from cheap cloth and made him look more like a Puritan minister than a successful businessman. He was frail in comparison with his brother, and seemed to occupy the background, as if it were his natural place in the order of things.

  ‘I don’t know how much you know about banking, Pyke, but suffice to say, my brother owns and manages a collection of small country banks. .’

  ‘We have branches in Norwich, Ely, Colchester and King’s Lynn.’ William spoke in a soft, almost effeminate voice.

  ‘Yes, quite.’ The lord turned a hard stare on his brother. ‘A small business, then, but not an insignificant one, you’ll understand. I take an interest only when scandal or ill fortune threaten to impugn the family’s good name. I fancy my brother will not mind if I let it be known that my judicious intervention helped save the business from ruin during the last banking crisis a little over three years ago.’

  ‘Well, that’s not entirely the case. .’ Beads of sweat had gathered on the brother’s forehead.

  ‘For heaven’s sake. If I wanted your opinion on the matter, I would have asked for it. Can I speak without being interrupted?’

  ‘I just didn’t want Mr Pyke to think the banks were managed recklessly. A well-regulated country bank only issues notes in fair demand. .’

  ‘What Pyke thinks of your rather modest acumen as a
businessman is quite beside the point,’ Edmonton said, ‘but then again we would not be in this mess if it were not for your childlike sense of what constitutes appropriate security and your wholly predictable lack of judgement.’

  William glared but refrained from starting an argument.

  ‘Now, would you permit me to speak without interruption? ’

  William mumbled something weakly in response.

  The function of a country bank, Edmonton went on to explain, was to oversee the circulation of banknotes in a particular area, and exchange banknotes belonging to the Bank of England and other smaller banks for their own. It was also to facilitate the transfer of funds from cities to towns and vice versa.

  ‘Usually there is no need to transfer hard currency between banks, unless one is embroiled in a banking crisis, in which case it might be necessary or prudent to bolster one’s cash reserves.’

  William stood in silence next to the fire.

  ‘Presently, however, the opposite is the case. All our banks are performing admirably and it is incumbent on us to transfer the surplus capital to where the demand is greatest. For our bank, that is London. Now, we keep all our surplus currency and a great proportion of our general circulation in government security inside the Bank of England itself but, and this is the vexed issue, on occasion we have to take it there ourselves. We currently lease an office close to the Bank of England on Cornhill in which we have installed a vault. The funds from our various country banks are transferred there for safe keeping, and when it is deemed appropriate, are taken under heavy guard to the Bank of England.’

  Pyke forgot about the icy temperature. Large sums of money were being discussed.

  ‘Until now everything has worked perfectly well.’ Edmonton drank liberally from a glass of claret. As he did so, his Adam’s apple swelled to the size of a small plum. ‘But, I am afraid to say, the last two deliveries, one from the bank in King’s Lynn and the other from the Colchester branch, have been. . how can I put it without sounding vulgar? Well, suffice to say, two thousand pounds has gone missing. Not enough to break us, you will be relieved to hear, but banking is a business built on trust, and if our investors discovered that such a sum had been stolen from under our noses, well, you can understand the awkward position it would put us in.’