Read The Detective Branch Online
Authors: Andrew Pepper
Tags: #London (England) - History - 1800-1950, #Mystery & Detective, #Pyke (Fictitious Character: Pepper), #Pyke (Fictitious Character : Pepper), #Fiction, #General, #Mystery Fiction, #Historical, #Traditional British, #Suspense, #Crime
The Detective Branch (11 page)
A sudden pain across Pyke’s midriff caused him to wince. Looking up, he saw the excitement on Whicher’s face. This was the best part of the job and he was sorry to be missing it: the noose was already halfway around their suspect’s neck. He asked about the man’s condition.
‘Broken nose, broken ankle. Might lose an eye, too. A doctor visited him last night, put a splint on his ankle and gave him some laudanum for the pain.’
‘I’d like you to take charge of the interrogation. Press him for a name, at the very least. And let me know as soon as possible if he’s identified as our gunman.’
‘And Egan?’
‘He’ll deny knowing the other man. He’ll tell you he hasn’t done anything wrong and in a way he’s right. He hasn’t. He’ll demand to be released. Just keep him locked up until I’m well enough to make it to Scotland Yard. And whatever you do,’ Pyke added, ‘don’t let anyone else go near the prisoners. And certainly no one outside of the Branch.’
Nodding, Whicher went to check his pocket watch. ‘I meant to say; your son’s waiting outside. I asked him if he wanted to see you first but he said you’d probably prefer to talk to me.’
A sharp, searing pain streaked up and down his entire left side but Pyke tried to smile. ‘Tell him to come in.’ At the door, Whicher paused and Pyke said, ‘It’s good of you to come and see me, keep me informed.’
Pyke had expected Felix to be his usual nonchalant self but as soon as the lad stepped into the room, he rushed over to the bed and embraced him, suppressing a sob. He assured Pyke that he’d come as soon as he’d heard, even though Mrs Booth, the housekeeper, had told him not to. It took Pyke a few minutes to calm his son and convince him that the injury wasn’t a serious one. When he showed Felix the wound, the lad pressed his nose against it, and informed Pyke that it didn’t smell. This was a good sign, Felix assured him. Pyke sat there, staring at his son, surprised at how much the lad’s concern had touched him. He wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words.
‘What?’ Felix withdrew from him, aware that he was being watched.
‘Nothing. It’s just good to see you, that’s all.’ Pyke smiled.
Felix looked away awkwardly. He stood up and wandered over to the window. ‘So what happened?’
‘I was chasing a suspected robber and I caught up with him. We fought. He did this to me with his knife.’
‘Did he get away?’
Pyke didn’t feel like boasting about the arrest so just shook his head.
‘What had this man stolen?’
‘A crucifix.’
‘That’s what you went to see the archdeacon about, wasn’t it?’
Pyke smiled. ‘Well remembered.’ The lad might not be the strongest fourteen-year-old but he had a quick mind.
Something outside had caught Felix’s attention, and when he eventually turned around his expression was serious. ‘When I first heard, when that policeman knocked at the door, and said you’d been injured, I thought . . .’ But tears had filled his eyes and he couldn’t carry on.
Ignoring the pain, Pyke reached forward and held out his hand. He could still remember what it felt like to be an orphan. For a moment, Felix remained where he was, unsure what to do, but finally he relented and sat down on the edge of the bed.
The surgeon was a short man with a limp handshake and prominent teeth. He inspected the wound and told Pyke that it was healing well but that he should remain in the hospital for another couple of days. When he had left, and with the help of some laudanum, Pyke tried to get up, but an acute pain scudded down one side of his body. Still, he made it as far as the commode and emptied his bladder. He had just staggered back to bed when Whicher put his head around the door.
‘We put the suspect in a room with ten other men. The coal-whipper picked him out.’
This was good news. ‘What about the gunsmith?’
Whicher was grinning now. ‘He picked out our man, too. According to his records, our suspect’s name is Sharp.’
‘Sharp.’ Pyke weighed the name in his mind. ‘I take it there’s been no confirmation of his name from Sharp himself?’
Whicher shook his head. ‘Still hasn’t said a word.’
Pyke thought briefly about their next move. There was no physical evidence against the man but the circumstantial evidence was strong, certainly enough to take the case to a magistrate. ‘What about Mayne and Wells?’ he asked.
‘Mayne’s cock-a-hoop. He told me to pass on his best, offer you his congratulations. I haven’t seen Wells.’
Pyke’s thoughts turned back to the evidence. ‘We still need more. All we’ve got is an old man who says he saw Sharp in the vicinity of the pawnbroker’s at the time of the robbery. The gunsmith’s evidence is good but it’s not enough. If we’re to send this man to the gallows, we need to find the pistol. And a motive . . .’
‘I’m afraid there was nothing on Sharp’s person to indicate where he lives. Unless he speaks, or someone else comes forward, we’re stuck.’
‘You need to put pressure on Egan. He knows something about this man. He must do. We need to find out how and why Sharp contacted him in the first place.’
‘Egan isn’t saying anything. He knows we don’t have anything on him.’
Pyke nodded. He couldn’t ask Whicher to do what he would do: take a cudgel and beat the truth out of Egan. He tried to get comfortable in the bed. ‘Jack?’
Whicher stared at him, surprised to be called by his first name.
‘Thank you.’
Even with the laudanum he’d consumed, Pyke was finding it difficult to sleep, and as he lay still, listening to the bleating of sheep being herded into nearby Smithfield for the market the following morning, he found himself thinking once more about Emily. In order to sleep, she had often resorted to doing what she’d done as a child: listing the names of the tenant farmers on her father’s estate.
Anderson, Blake, Cant, Curtis, Dawson, Edwards
. It was funny that he could still remember the names so clearly; and that he could hear them in his dead wife’s voice, her low, polished tone. Later, he slipped in and out of dreams that unsettled him but which he couldn’t quite recall when he woke up. The air in the room was fetid and the bed sheets were soaked with his perspiration. Outside, he could still hear the animals, but he had grown used to the noise and he even found the bleating reassuring in its monotony. For some reason, he now found himself thinking about Jo, her red hair and her soft white skin. They had been happy for a time, the three of them, four if he counted Godfrey, until he had cajoled Jo into his bed. He hadn’t heard from her in more than two years and briefly he wondered what had become of her. Sleep finally came to him just as the sun was rising, pale and orange, in the east.
Anderson, Blake, Cant, Curtis, Dawson, Edwards
. It was funny that he could still remember the names so clearly; and that he could hear them in his dead wife’s voice, her low, polished tone. Later, he slipped in and out of dreams that unsettled him but which he couldn’t quite recall when he woke up. The air in the room was fetid and the bed sheets were soaked with his perspiration. Outside, he could still hear the animals, but he had grown used to the noise and he even found the bleating reassuring in its monotony. For some reason, he now found himself thinking about Jo, her red hair and her soft white skin. They had been happy for a time, the three of them, four if he counted Godfrey, until he had cajoled Jo into his bed. He hadn’t heard from her in more than two years and briefly he wondered what had become of her. Sleep finally came to him just as the sun was rising, pale and orange, in the east.
‘Pyke.’
He felt someone roughly shaking his arm.
‘
Pyke
.’
Pyke
.’
Opening his sleep-encrusted eyes, Pyke saw Jack Whicher standing over him. Instantly he could tell from Whicher’s expression that all was not well.
‘What is it?’ His head was still groggy from the laudanum and there was a dull ache in his side.
‘Very bad news, I’m afraid.’
Ignoring the pain, Pyke sat up and rubbed his eyes. ‘What’s happened?’
‘The man you fought, Sharp . . .’ Whicher hesitated, not sure how to continue.
‘What about him?’
‘The gaoler found him in his cell first thing this morning. He hanged himself some time in the night.’
Whitechapel High Street
DECEMBER 1844
SIX
O
ne of the clerks ran into Pyke’s office, red faced and out of breath. He stood there for a few moments panting. ‘A man’s been attacked, possibly killed. A policeman saw it happen, in the churchyard next to the police station house on Aldgate High Street. Everyone from K Division is out looking for the murderer and Wells is rounding up as many men as he can find. He told me to come and get you, and anyone else from the Detective Branch.’
ne of the clerks ran into Pyke’s office, red faced and out of breath. He stood there for a few moments panting. ‘A man’s been attacked, possibly killed. A policeman saw it happen, in the churchyard next to the police station house on Aldgate High Street. Everyone from K Division is out looking for the murderer and Wells is rounding up as many men as he can find. He told me to come and get you, and anyone else from the Detective Branch.’
It was late, after nine, and Pyke had just been about to go home. The other detectives had already left. Taking his greatcoat from the stand, he followed the clerk along the corridor and outside into Scotland Yard, where constables in uniform were streaming out of the single men’s quarters and getting into the carriages that were lined up, one behind the other, to take them to the East End.
‘What do you know?’ Pyke asked, as soon as he found Wells, who was instructing the driver of one of the carriages.
It was a grim, wet night and the strong easterly breeze was driving the icy rain directly into their faces.
‘An officer from K Division saw it happen; called for reinforcements and gave chase. They followed the culprit all the way along Whitechapel High Street and now they think they’ve got him cornered in the area just south of the railway tracks, a little farther along from the new station at Shoreditch.’
Wells climbed on to the roof of one of the carriages and pulled Pyke up next to him. Moments later, they were moving, eight or ten men inside each carriage, another four on the roof.
For a while they sat in silence, as the empty pavements and shuttered shops of the Strand passed by in a rain-soaked blur. Pyke had not seen much of Wells since he had returned to work a few months before, and had not missed the man’s irascible temper and his unctuous ways. Nor had Pyke heard anything more about Wells’s tussle with Benedict Pierce to succeed Tilling as assistant commissioner. Some time in the autumn, Pyke had concluded that Wells had exaggerated his antagonism towards Pierce in order to try to befriend him. This meant that on the few occasions when Pyke had bumped into Wells at the station house, the acting superintendent had wanted to stop and talk as though they were more than just colleagues.
Pyke knew that Wells and Mayne were happy enough with the outcome of the robbery investigation, even if the likely culprit, Sharp, had hanged himself in one of their cells. The fact that they didn’t know why Sharp had shot and killed three people, including the owner of the shop, or that the likely cause of the shooting, a jewel-encrusted crucifix, had not been found, didn’t appear to concern them.
For his part, Pyke was not prepared to accept, without corroboration, that Sharp had killed those men in Cullen’s shop. It was true that the evidence pointed in that direction but the apparent lack of motive concerned him. When he’d finally returned to work after his injury had healed, Pyke had been less than impressed by the investigation into Sharp’s suicide. The gaoler, who had been sleeping at the time under the influence of his nightly dose of porter, had shouldered much of the blame and had subsequently been dismissed. But he’d denied providing Sharp with the means of killing himself and the official report had been unable to determine how Sharp had managed to requisition sufficient rope to hang himself with.
It was true that Pyke had emerged from the events of the summer with his reputation and position intact. With Sharp dead, no one had bothered to look too carefully into the background of Harry Dove and the third victim, who had been identified as John Gibb. The fence, Egan, had been released without charge. He’d protested his innocence throughout and with no evidence to support a prosecution, they had had no choice but to let him go. The only fall-out from what had happened had been Pyke’s association with Ned Villums. Pyke hadn’t seen or heard from Villums since July, nor had he made any effort to get in touch with the man himself.
As the carriage turned on to Fleet Street, the taller buildings and narrower street afforded them more protection from the rain, enough to allow a conversation.
‘Do you know who the victim is?’ Pyke asked, wiping water from his eyes.
‘I was told he might be affiliated with St Botolph’s,’ Wells said.
Pyke nodded. It was just as the clerk had explained: the church next door to the station house on Aldgate High Street. ‘You know we’ll never find the culprit. Those alleyways and courts could hide a whole army of murderers.’
Wells pulled up the collar of his coat and dug his hands into his pockets. Pyke could tell he was in his element. For once his eyes were bright whereas usually they were hard. Perhaps this kind of excursion reminded him of his time in the army.
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