Read Kill-Devil and Water Online
Authors: Andrew Pepper
Tags: #Jamaica, #Murder, #England, #Sugar Plantations, #London (England), #Mystery & Detective, #Prostitutes, #Crimes Against, #Fiction, #General, #Investigation, #Historical, #London, #Crime
Kill-Devil and Water (40 page)
‘Even bad news?’ Pyke asked, still not convinced by this part of the old woman’s tale. Even taking into account the debilitating effects of slavery and its aftermath, how likely was it that a mother and daughter wouldn’t make any effort to see one another during all this time?
‘Is there any other kind of news for black folk on this island?’
‘So what did you think when you heard that your daughter had agreed to marry the son of the man you despised?’
‘What do you
think
I thought?’ Bertha shook her head, as though the question were a stupid one.
think
I thought?’ Bertha shook her head, as though the question were a stupid one.
‘And yet you still did nothing; you didn’t write to your daughter, to try to persuade her she was making a mistake?’
‘A mistake? A rich white man who by all accounts loved her? Why on earth would I tell her not to marry him?’
‘But they’re cousins.’
For a while Bertha sat very still, her eyes tightly shut and her face composed. Then she smiled. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, sir. I’m no longer a young woman. Too much talking tires me out. I don’t wish to be rude and I’d like you to stay here in the village tonight - as our guest. But I need to rest so I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
‘What if Phillip isn’t dead?’ Pyke persisted. ‘What if he lived and at some point travelled to London?’ He was thinking about the blind mudlark who’d been seen talking with Arthur Sobers on the Ratcliff Highway. Was it simply coincidence that Phillip Malvern and this man were both blind?
‘Phillip died a long time ago. I told you that already.’
‘But you don’t know that for a fact, do you?’
This time she stared at him with something approaching hostility and refused to answer the question.
‘Did you know Mary had sailed for London?’
‘I heard about it after she’d left.’
‘And what did you think?’
‘I’ve told you, I am tired and need a rest. Now I’m going to have to insist upon it.’ She went to stand up and Pyke handed her the bamboo cane.
‘Would you have supported her decision, if you’d known about it?’
This time she turned to face him. ‘You mean, would I have sent her to her death?’
‘You
knew
she was going to die?’
knew
she was going to die?’
‘I’m what folk here called a myal woman. The spirits visit me. I have certain powers of intuition.’ She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to believe me but I foresaw that Mary would die a very long way from home.’
‘Mary had those powers, too, didn’t she?’ Pyke thought about what McQuillan had told him. ‘Do you think she foresaw her death as well?’
But Bertha had clearly had enough and, without saying another word, she began to shuffle down the hill towards her hut.
That night, the villagers ate barbecued pork, drank rum and danced to the beat of their jam-jams and kitty-katties under the stars. It was a balmy night, and as Pyke watched the revellers shake their bodies in time to the music, he thought about his conversation with the old woman, unable to reconcile the different elements of what she had told him. Did she really believe that Phillip was long dead, and had Mary been entirely ignorant of her own parentage? Later in the evening, Bertha performed what he guessed was a traditional ritual: having sprinkled powder on her volunteer and fed him rum, she stood back while her assistant, a much younger man, danced in time to the drumbeats until the volunteer fell to the ground, apparently dead. While the beat of the jam-jams and kitty-katties echoed across the mountain, Bertha sprinkled herbs on to the ‘corpse’, squeezed juice into his mouth, touched his eyes with the tips of her fingers and chanted into the air. As the ring of revellers tightened around her, and the stamping and drumming became louder, she suddenly clapped her hands together and the volunteer came back to life.
It should have been easy for Pyke to dismiss the whole spectacle as nonsense, as other white men before him had done. Generally he wasn’t a superstitious man, preferring to put his faith in the rigours of science and reason. But as he sat there taking it all in - the warm air, the strange sounds and smells, the fiery rum warming his stomach - Pyke found himself curiously affected by the spectacle. This hadn’t been a performance for him or even for those who’d participated in it but rather for family and friends who’d suffered and died during slavery, and especially for Mary Edgar, who had been buried alone and unloved in a faraway city. This was
her
farewell, and as the dance broke up and the revellers fell to the ground, exhausted, Pyke caught the old woman’s eye. She looked at him, puzzled at first, and then broke into a smile, as if to suggest her long-lost daughter had finally come home.
her
farewell, and as the dance broke up and the revellers fell to the ground, exhausted, Pyke caught the old woman’s eye. She looked at him, puzzled at first, and then broke into a smile, as if to suggest her long-lost daughter had finally come home.
Later that night they came for him. Six or seven men crept up to his hut and pushed open the door. Pyke watched them from the trees on the other side of the clearing. Shortly afterwards they emerged from the hut, talking and gesticulating to one another. They looked around, not knowing what to do. Pyke withdrew behind the line of trees and stared up at the branches rustling overhead. Pyke didn’t doubt that, had he stayed in the hut, he would be dead by now; there was something he’d asked the old woman about, something he’d said, something he knew that made him a threat. Harper had been the same.
Earlier, before the celebration had started, he had hidden his horse a long way from the village and had already planned his escape route. He would wait for the men to disperse and then try to retrieve his mare. By that time the sun would be up and he would start the long two-day trek towards Kingston and the steamer.
Part of him wanted to have another talk with the old woman, hold a knife to her throat and force the whole truth from her. But some of the men had congregated outside her hut, and Pyke knew he wouldn’t get within fifty feet of her.
To go anywhere near her was to take a risk that he wasn’t prepared to take because, right at that moment, more than anything, Pyke wanted to take Felix in his arms and hold him. It was time to go home.
PART III
*
London
AUGUST 1840
London
AUGUST 1840
TWENTY
Every seat in the cavernous room had been filled, which meant that Pyke had to stand at the back of the hall and could barely see, let alone hear, the figures on the stage. He moved down the aisle through the mass of bodies and eventually found a spot just to the left of the stage.
Exeter Hall was synonymous with a loosely connected group of anti-slavery, temperance and religious movements and was hosting the first Anti-Slavery Society World Convention. As Pyke surveyed the solemn faces in the crowd, listening earnestly to the sober pronouncements of the speaker, he thought about the unforgiving doctrine that many of them subscribed to - that God helped only those who helped themselves. He wanted to take each and every one of them a few streets to the north or south, to St Giles or Alsatia, and show them the conditions that many people had to endure through no fault of their own. It wasn’t their views he objected to as much as their holier-than-thou attitudes, as though God had personally selected them for his mission on earth while leaving the undeserving multitude to beg for their guidance or rot in the gutters. Emily had once tried to help other people, without a trace of the smugness and self-aggrandisement displayed by the Christian missionaries, and Pyke didn’t doubt she too would have despised most of the men in this room.
A new speaker had just taken to the stage and someone next to Pyke identified the man as Reverend William Knibb - ‘pastor of the Baptist mission in Falmouth, Jamaica’. Knibb was a small, unprepossessing man in his late thirties or early forties but he spoke in a loud, confident voice and soon had the rapt attention of his audience. He started his address by denouncing the popular views circulating in the colonial and metropolitan newspapers, put forward by the planters’ lobby, that emancipation had created a lazy and rebellious breed of negro. Knibb went on to suggest quite the opposite; that the free villages built on land purchased as a result of the generosity of congregations in Britain had fostered godliness, morality, domestic happiness and social order. ‘A place,’ he added, ‘of noble free peasantry where the man goes out to work and the woman, released from proper toil, tends to the home, and where there is a new Bible on every table.’
That got a thunderous ovation.
Given what Pyke had seen for himself in the mountains above Falmouth, it was hard to disagree with Knibb’s argument: that former slaves lived a better life freed from the shackles of slavery, and that owning their homes and tending their own plots fostered self-sufficiency and, in turn, contentment. But he also thought about John Harper’s damning indictment of the Baptists’ mission in Jamaica - that, in essence, it represented another form of colonialism since its goal was to turn former slaves into versions of themselves. To amuse himself, he wondered what Knibb and others would think if he took the floor and told them about what had really happened at Ginger Hill.
Still, Pyke held his tongue and waited patiently for the reason he’d come to the meeting in the first place. It came towards the end of Knibb’s address.
‘To show their respect for that esteemed man Joseph Sturge,’ Knibb said to a deafening cheer, ‘a town was set up that bore his honoured name. As we speak a new community named after my own birthplace, Kettering, is being settled and very soon a village called Malvern will be established.’ Knibb waited as Silas Malvern, perched on top of his high-chair, was carried onstage by two burly men. ‘It is my very great pleasure, and honour, to present to you Mr Silas Malvern. Mr Malvern is now a resident of London but until recently he owned one of the largest sugar plantations in the western part of Jamaica.’ A hushed silence fell over the room; this was the enemy right there in their midst. ‘My friends, please, I can perhaps guess what you’re thinking but before you rush to judgement, hear me out. Ill health prevents my brother, Mr Malvern, from addressing you in person but he wishes it to be known that he now regrets his role in the slave trade and by way of restitution he has committed to donating land to our mission for the purpose of establishing two new free villages in the parish of Trelawny, Jamaica.’
Knibb basked in the applause and Silas Malvern even managed a feeble smile from his high-chair. Knibb was preparing to bring his address to a climax. ‘In the name of three hundred thousand negroes in Jamaica, I return to you all the thanks which grateful hearts, happy wives and children can give.’
Many in the audience stood to applaud Knibb and Malvern and the applause continued as Malvern was carried from the stage.
Pyke found the old man sitting backstage on his high-chair, looking vaguely bemused. His porters had left him and Knibb was having what looked like an intense conversation with one of his supporters. Malvern seemed to have aged noticeably in the two and a half months since Pyke had last seen him. His shoulders were hunched, his arms like pieces of string and his eyes were sunken and rimmed by red circles.
‘You once owned two thousand acres of land and kept five hundred slaves. Do you really imagine a gift of a paltry hundred acres or so will buy you a place in heaven?’
Pyke could see that the old man had heard him well enough but Malvern whispered, ‘Come closer, boy, so I can see you. My eyesight isn’t so good these days.’
Pyke crouched down and looked into Malvern’s translucent eyes. ‘I came to your house to ask you questions about Mary Edgar.’
‘I remember you, sir. Reckless and rude you were. I don’t forget that kind of behaviour in a hurry.’ Up close, the old man’s breath stank of rancid meat.
‘I asked you, then, if you knew Mary Edgar or had intervened in the investigation to find her killer.’
‘I remember, sir, and the moment I threatened to call the police you slunk away like a whipped dog.’
Pyke allowed Malvern his brief moment of triumph. ‘I’ve just returned from Jamaica.’
That made Malvern sit up in his chair.
‘I had a revealing discussion with William Alefounder. He told me that you conspired with him to withhold information from the police about your family’s attachment to Mary Edgar and Lord Bedford. He also told me that you forced him to flee the country, fearing he might implicate you and your family in these two murders.’
‘What
rot
. Did he tell you all this?’ Malvern’s face momentarily lit up, as if he relished the opportunity to refute Pyke’s accusations. ‘I might have had a quiet chat with Alefounder, assured him of my innocence in the unfortunate affairs you’ve just referred to and counselled him about the wisdom of unnecessarily sullying my family’s good name. As for
forcing
him, the moment that I mentioned that my daughter, Elizabeth, had sailed for Jamaica to relay the tragic news to her brother, he jumped at the chance to go.’
rot
. Did he tell you all this?’ Malvern’s face momentarily lit up, as if he relished the opportunity to refute Pyke’s accusations. ‘I might have had a quiet chat with Alefounder, assured him of my innocence in the unfortunate affairs you’ve just referred to and counselled him about the wisdom of unnecessarily sullying my family’s good name. As for
forcing
him, the moment that I mentioned that my daughter, Elizabeth, had sailed for Jamaica to relay the tragic news to her brother, he jumped at the chance to go.’
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