The Revenge of Captain Paine pm-2 Page 5

  ‘But those bills are as good as cash. We need some funds at short notice in case of claims made against us.’

  ‘Nonsense. We keep too much in reserve as it is. Dead money that’s earning no interest for the bank.’

  Blackwood’s face reddened still further. ‘It’s my name above the bank’s door. My name. People are willing to entrust us with their savings because of my reputation and my integrity.’

  Smiling, Pyke heaved a sigh. ‘That might have been true when you were running the four country banks in Norfolk but we both know that people here in London entrust us with their savings because we pay them a higher rate of interest than any other bank in the Square Mile.’

  They were quickly getting to the nub of the matter. The four banks in question had been run by William Blackwood but only because his brother, Emily’s father, the late Lord Edmonton, had shown no interest in getting involved, apart from greedily collecting any profits that had accrued. Edmonton had owned the banks, lock, stock and barrel, and after his death, the banks had passed into Pyke’s hands as part of his wedding agreement with Emily, who, in turn, had inherited the Hambledon estate. In his new career as banker, Pyke had soon realised that William Blackwood was, indeed, a very competent figure and realised, too, that he’d need the man’s help, if his plan of opening a branch in London was ever to be realised. In order to keep Blackwood at the helm, Pyke had given him a third of the bank’s stock for nothing. Blackwood had always seemed to loathe his garrulous brother almost as much as Pyke did, but this didn’t mean that he welcomed Pyke’s takeover with open arms. In his rather traditionalist view of the world, banking was a risk-averse gentleman’s profession in which bankers provided a service to respectable people and charged them an appropriate fee for doing so. It didn’t involve sharp practices, brickbats and the whiff of violence. But since Pyke had retained two-thirds of the stock, his word was the one that mattered and it was this, more than anything else, which irked William Blackwood. At least Edmonton had never actually intervened in the day-to-day running of the banks, Pyke had once overheard him say. ‘But now I have to listen to, and take orders from, someone who doesn’t know an acceptance from an endorsement.’ Pyke knew about money, though. He knew the difference between a farthing and a groat and, under their twin stewardship, the bank had flourished, but the disagreements and tension in the partnership had never gone away.

  The door flew open and the meeting was interrupted by a dishevelled man dressed in tatty clothes who fell into the room, closely followed by the head clerk, who claimed he had been forcibly brushed aside by the interloper.

  ‘Harry Cobb, at your service.’ The man performed an elaborate bow, his velveteen coat touching the floor.

  Amused, Pyke told the clerk to leave them alone for a minute and asked him what he wanted.

  ‘I’m a humble shoemaker, sir, as was my father and his father, too. I remember a time when we were plump in the pocket but not any more. Not since the sweaters moved in and stole all of our business. It used to be that we’d get paid three shillings to make a pair of shoes, five for a pair of boots. But now there’s this sweater by the name of Groat who’s got all these wimmin and chirren, hundreds of ’em, mostly bilked from the workhouse, to make his shoes, working sixteen hours a day for almost nothing, and none of us folk can’t compete with him, at least not on our own. Not after we’ve paid for our grindery, candles and tools.’

  Pyke regarded him with curiosity. ‘So what is it you want from us?’

  ‘Just the chance to earn our bread.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, sir, I ain’t an unreasonable man, in spite of my barging in on your meeting. I knows youse all want to make a profit like the next man but I heard folk say Mr Pyke’s a good man, not the kind who lends his arse and shits through his ribs, so that’s why I’m here. Me and a few others have got together and we’d like you to lend us some Darby, so we can make our boots and shoes and show ’em direct to the public.’

  Nash ran his fingers through his mane of black hair, swept back and held in place by a sticky unguent. ‘Get out, you impertinent beggar.’

  ‘Let the man finish his piece,’ Pyke said, before turning back to face Cobb. ‘How much do you want to borrow?’

  ‘I reckon fifty megs should do it.’ Sniffing, Cobb wiped his nose on the sleeve of his coat.

  ‘And what security could you put up for the loan?’

  ‘Security?’ Cobb seemed flummoxed.

  ‘Something to guarantee the loan. Some property perhaps?’

  ‘If we owned property, sir, we wouldn’t need to come to you cap in hand begging for Darby, would we?’ He was puzzled more than angry.

  ‘And unfortunately for you, we’re a business and not a charity. If we were to lend you some money without any security, how could we stop you from pocketing it and then disappearing?’

  ‘Why would we do that, sir? We’re honest culls just wantin’ a chance to earn our bread.’

  Nash leaned back in his chair, resting the heels of his boots on the table. ‘Listen to him. I don’t know whether to pity the poor wretch or throw him out on his ear.’

  Cobb looked perplexed. ‘You mean you ain’t gonna lend us a thing?’ Suddenly he seemed on the verge of tears.

  ‘Get out, you dirty little man.’ Nash stood up and tried to push him out of the door.

  ‘Jem, let the man be.’ Pyke kept his tone flat and neutral. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Cobb, but we require security.’

  ‘Go and have a look for yeself. Groat has taken over the whole terrace on Granby Street. Rooms full of young chirren, kept in the dark, their little fingers worn down to the bone.’

  ‘It won’t make a difference.’

  The wind seemed to leave Cobb’s sail. His shoulders sagged forward and his head bowed to the floor. ‘Thankee, sir, thankee. I won’t hold you up any more.’ He shuffled to the door and left without uttering another word.

  Pyke watched his young assistant’s face, as hard and unyielding as dried wax. It was one of Nash’s attributes that he saw people only as entries in a ledger book, but while he would doubtless give Cobb no further consideration, Pyke was cursed or blessed by other thoughts. The old shoemaker might perhaps drown his disappointment with a few glasses of gin in a nearby tavern and then trudge home through dark, muddy streets to his lodging house in Bethnal Green, where there would be no food for his family to eat and precious little firewood to keep the room warm. As a younger man he had probably served a long apprenticeship learning the rudiments of his craft and had been assured that these skills would be sufficient to earn a living for the rest of his days, but in recent years the arrival of the sweaters and the hiring of non-apprenticed women and children to make inferior shoes had driven down prices, wages and conditions to such an extent that the old promises counted for nothing.

  ‘What a pathetic old fellow,’ Nash said, shaking his head. ‘Now let’s get back to this business of the loan to the Grand Northern…’

  Money was the only thing that counted, Pyke told himself. Not honour, not morals, not tradition. Men like Cobb couldn’t feed their families because they had no money, not because they had no honour or morality. Money enabled people to live their lives as they wanted to, not according to the whims of others. Without money there could be no liberty or freedom.

  Pyke closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind, but an image of Cobb’s hunched figure and pleading face remained with him for the rest of the day.

  There were many different ways to steal from people and many layers to the city’s burgeoning criminal fraternity. At the bottom of the pile were the ferret-eyed pickpockets who trawled the markets, fairs, public houses and crowded pavements for easy marks, and the rampsmen who assaulted people at random with brickbats and cudgels and would kill or maim their victims without any compunction. Then came the mudlarks who scavenged the Thames near the wharves and docks in the East End for items deliberately discarded by their associates who loaded and unloaded the ships. Next we
re the rushers, who showed up en masse at someone’s front door and forced their way into the home, taking whatever they could and disappearing before the police could be alerted. A little higher up the chain were the receivers and trainers who oversaw gangs of pickpockets from their flash houses and brothels, and the skilled housebreakers who broke into the upper floors of respectable homes and stole cash and jewellery. Near the top of the pile were the so-called cracksmen whose guile and equipment enabled them to break into apparently impregnable safes and strongboxes, and the flash Toms who ran brothels with iron fists and took a cut of all the illegal enterprises on their turf. But right at the top were a handful of figures who presided over a complex network of illicit buyers and sellers and who offered a service that no one else could provide: a way of transforming the proceeds of theft into untraceable notes and coins.

  Ned Villums was such a figure, and every Monday afternoon without fail he was ushered up to Pyke’s office, where he would deposit two sacks filled with stolen coins and notes. After they’d talked, Pyke would go downstairs to the vault, withdraw an equivalent sum of money, minus his commission, and return it to Villums.

  Pyke had known Villums for a number of years and trusted the man unequivocally. It helped, too, that they both knew what the other was capable of and went out of their way to be fair minded. Pyke had once seen Villums feed a man he’d caught stealing from him to a bear tied up outside his tavern and used for sport.

  ‘Does anyone else apart from you know about our arrangement?’ Pyke asked him, as he prepared to leave.

  That drew a sharp frown. ‘I know the rules as well as you do, Pyke.’ He shook his head, as though irritated he’d been asked the question. ‘Has someone been blabbering?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘But you suspect someone?’

  Pyke shook his head. ‘Not at this end.’

  ‘But you suspect that someone knows? And you’re fishing to see if one of my lads might have talked?’

  Pyke shrugged. ‘Is that a possibility?’

  ‘No.’›

  They exchanged a cold stare. ‘Then there’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Good.’ Villums stood up and pulled his short, double-breasted jacket down over his belly. ‘I’ll show myself out.’

  ‘Ned?’

  Villums turned around at the door. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Let’s both try and be even more careful in the future.’

  Villums left without saying a word. Pyke wondered whether he had unnecessarily antagonised a man with a history of and propensity for violence.

  FIVE

  The magistrates’ court at Bow Street was located at the front of a tall, narrow, box-shaped building on the west side of the street, and by the time Pyke had pushed his way through the throng of law clerks, Bow Street Runners and lawyers assembled either on the steps at the front of the building or in the entrance hall and corridors, the hearing was about to start. Formerly the parlour in a private house, the room had long since abandoned any claims to respectability, and now the general air of dreariness, fostered by many years of neglect, had become institutionalised. Pyke knew it well, of course. As a Bow Street Runner, he had proffered testimony on many occasions from the witness stand, and it was the smell of the room, a musty odour of mildew, unwashed clothes, dried sweat and cheap tobacco, which carried him back to an earlier moment in his life. There were still one or two people he recognised from the old days but they either ignored him or refused to meet his stare: back then his reputation meant that few people had been willing to cross him and even fewer had sought him out as a friend or confidant.

  Pyke’s uncle, Godfrey, stood alone in the dock, an elevated platform in front of a large mirror with a wooden rail running around it, while the chief magistrate, Sir Henry Bellows, conferred with the man who would be presenting the evidence against Godfrey. The point of the hearing was to determine whether the charges against the accused — in this case, criminal libel and possibly also sedition — merited a trial in a higher court. Once the evidence had been presented by the Crown’s barrister, Godfrey would be allowed to ask questions both about the evidence and the witness statements made against him in the hope of exposing contradictions and lies in the Crown’s case. On the Crown’s part, it was hoped that Godfrey’s testimony might be used against him if the case came to trial.

  Wearing a blue, double-breasted Spencer coat with polished brass buttons over a cream embroidered waistcoat and frilly white shirt, his uncle did not look like a common criminal. He greeted Pyke with a hug and took a swig of gin from his flask before casting an eye across the crowded room. ‘A sniff of scandal and the jackals come running. They could have charged on the door and still packed the room three times over.’ He was a tall, broad-shouldered man approaching seventy years old, overweight, with a face as red as a beetroot and a shock of bone-white hair.

  Pyke looked at the row of well-fed, smartly attired men sitting alongside Bellows on the bench. ‘Which one is Conroy?’

  ‘The silver fox with the coiled moustache. The bulldog next to him is his lawyer, Charles Frederick Williams, a King’s bencher no less.’ Godfrey took another swig from his flask and belched. ‘I know this poison will kill me in the end but who would want to live in an age of moral propriety?’ He shook his head with disgust. ‘That’s what I heard someone call it the other day.’

  As a much younger man Godfrey had published provocative essays by the likes of Paine and Spence, risking imprisonment to do so, but his political idealism had waned in his middle years and he had found that salacious tales of criminal wrongdoing, sold to the working poor for a penny, were more lucrative than tiresome political pieties. Now in his old age, and with nothing left to lose, Godfrey had again become a thorn in the side of the authorities. A weekly scandal sheet, printed on cheap paper and sold for a penny, exposed the illicit sexual liaisons and misdemeanours of the cream of society, and an unstamped newspaper called the Scourge spread a hotchpotch of radical sentiment, though in Pyke’s view it was often difficult to tell the two publications apart. It was also hard to determine which one enraged the authorities more.

  One piece in particular had resulted in the charges being brought against Godfrey. Floridly entitled ‘The Lady and the Scamp’, the article had alleged that Sir John Conroy, comptroller of the Duchess of Kent’s household, had been fucking the widowed duchess for some years. It also accused Conroy of procuring large sums of money from the public to line his own pocket and mismanaging the duchess’s affairs to such an extent she would soon have to be declared bankrupt. The piece had caused quite a stir, both because Conroy enjoyed some important political connections and because the allegations necessarily implicated Princess Victoria, the duchess’s sixteen-year-old daughter and heir to the British throne.

  It was highly unusual for the evidence at a hearing for a libel case to be presented by a barrister acting for the Crown but, in the light of Conroy’s elevated social status and fears that the claims might damage the young princess, palms had doubtless been greased and an exception had been made. Pyke suspected that the actual reason related not to the piece Godfrey had published about Conroy but rather to the fact that the authorities wanted to close down his publications once and for all.

  Libel didn’t carry a custodial sentence but if the damages awarded to Conroy were significant Godfrey could be bankrupted and sent to prison until he found sufficient funds to pay the debt.

  ‘Once the Crown’s barrister has presented the evidence against you, you’ll have a chance to ask some questions,’ Pyke whispered, across the rail. ‘Call on me and ask what I’ve unearthed about Conroy’s activities.’

  ‘Good God, my boy, what have you found?’ He grabbed Pyke’s sleeve and looked pleadingly into his face.

  ‘Just call me and follow my lead.’

  But there wasn’t time to explain. From the bench Bellows called the room to order and Pyke stepped back into the crowd.

  The chief magistrate was a peculi
ar-looking man, with a V-shaped streak of ink-black hair that extended almost as far down his forehead as his eyebrows, a pointed, beak-like nose, sunken hooded eyes and teeth that looked as if they’d been sharpened on a knife grinder’s stone. He sat back on the bench, rearranged his grey wig and glanced around the courtroom, not seeing Pyke in the faces amassed before him. This was a good thing as the surprise, when it came, would be far greater. Sir Henry Bellows had always disliked Pyke with a vehemence bordering on mania because he blamed him, rightly or wrongly, for the deaths of his two predecessors, Sir Richard Fox and Brownlow Vines.

  To the palpable disappointment of those packed into the courtroom expecting the exchanges to be laced with salacious details, the hearing lasted no more than five minutes. The Crown’s barrister, William Beresford, dismissed the article Godfrey had published as ‘total fabrication’ and called upon Godfrey to produce any evidence that could support his claims. Godfrey asserted that he did have a corroborating witness but that he had not been able to contact her for the hearing. This was lampooned by Beresford as another lie and in his summary Bellows ordered that Godfrey return to the courtroom in two weeks to stand trial for libel.

  ‘If, by that time, you cannot produce this witness, it seems likely you will be found guilty and face the most serious reparations that can be levied against you under the terms of the law.’ Bellows paused for breath. ‘In my opinion, you are a loathsome creature who publishes wilful lies about eminent members of society with the sole intention of causing them shame and embarrassment. The sooner you are locked up, the better it will be for all of us.’ Pushing his spectacles up his nose, he looked at Godfrey and added, ‘Do you have anything else to add?’

  ‘There was another matter I wished to draw the court’s attention to, Your Honour.’ Imploringly Godfrey looked around the room for Pyke.