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 (13 page)
‘A surplice?’ Pyke had already conferred with Fricker inside the church, and no mention had been made of such a garment.
The churchwarden confirmed that Guppy
hadn’t
been wearing his surplice when he’d come across the rector’s battered corpse and explained that the garment itself was rather unusual in that it had strips of rabbit fur lining the shoulders. Pyke made a mental note to go back to the churchyard, once he had finished at the rectory. The fact that the garment appeared to be missing added a new dimension to the situation. When he asked whether anything else had been taken, Fricker shook his head and added that there were a few coins in Guppy’s pocket and his gold wedding ring was still on his finger.
hadn’t
been wearing his surplice when he’d come across the rector’s battered corpse and explained that the garment itself was rather unusual in that it had strips of rabbit fur lining the shoulders. Pyke made a mental note to go back to the churchyard, once he had finished at the rectory. The fact that the garment appeared to be missing added a new dimension to the situation. When he asked whether anything else had been taken, Fricker shook his head and added that there were a few coins in Guppy’s pocket and his gold wedding ring was still on his finger.
At the mention of Guppy’s ring, the wife broke down in tears again. ‘Did your husband perhaps mention that he’d arranged to meet someone at the church?’ Pyke asked, when her crying had stopped.
She stared at him through weary eyes, seemingly perplexed. ‘If my husband had intended to meet someone, why would he have not invited them to the rectory?’
A little later, while tea was being served in the drawing room, Nutt took him aside and ushered him into the hallway. ‘I hear Fricker has already told you about this chap, Francis Hiley. The rector called him his odd-job man, and seemed fond of him, although I couldn’t see what the fuss was about.’
Pyke stared into the beadle’s podgy face. ‘You didn’t like him, then?’
‘It’s not that I disliked him.’ Nutt lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘But he was a strange fellow, if truth be told. He never said very much but he was always around, looking, keeping an eye on things.’
‘How did he come to be working here?’
‘He was recommended by the Reverend Martin Jakes from one of our sister churches, St Matthew’s in Bethnal Green.’
Pyke’s thoughts turned immediately to the search earlier that evening, which had been focused on the area around St Matthew’s. He thought, too, about the scavenger he’d arrested and then let go, when it became clear that the man knew nothing about the murder.
The picture that Nutt sought to paint of the rector was one of a generous and selfless man who had given food and shelter to a lowly ex-convict, but he couldn’t really say what Guppy had hired Hiley to do, except tend the graves and keep the yard tidy, which, Nutt admitted, was also the duty of the gardener. Nutt told Pyke that he’d heard Hiley had spent time in Coldbath Fields, possibly for killing his wife, but his information was sketchy. Like Wells, he had already made up his mind that Hiley had killed the rector and was trying to push Pyke in this direction. Tapping his nose, Nutt explained that no one had seen Hiley since the murder and that they weren’t likely to. Nutt was rather less helpful in providing a motive: he told Pyke he had no idea why Hiley might have wanted to kill Guppy but suggested that some men were just predisposed towards violence.
Back in the drawing room, Pyke asked Whicher what he’d been able to find out. Whicher said that the police constable’s description of the man he’d seen in the yard matched Fricker’s description of Hiley.
‘No chance the two of them could have conferred?’ Pyke asked.
Whicher shook his head.
It was late, already well past one in the morning, but Pyke had insisted that all of the servants and household be summoned, so that he could question them about their dealings with Guppy.
Pyke conducted the interviews in the drawing room but no one had very much to add. All the servants, gardeners and stable-hands were polite but tight lipped about their employer, and none of them could give any reason why someone might have wanted to kill him. They were a little more forthcoming about Francis Hiley. None of them seemed to have liked him, and to a man - and woman - they backed up the beadle’s belief that Hiley was a little odd. A loner, someone said; a thief, another reckoned. When Pyke asked Matilda, the wife, about Hiley, she seized the chance to praise her husband’s philanthropy; the fact that he’d been willing to give a felon another chance when the rest of society had turned its back on him. The implication was clear:
look how the scoundrel repaid his generosity
. She clearly felt, as Nutt did, that Hiley had killed her husband.
look how the scoundrel repaid his generosity
. She clearly felt, as Nutt did, that Hiley had killed her husband.
How long had Hiley been employed by her husband? Pyke asked. She’d thought about it and said since April.
And had there been any indication that Hiley had a temper?
No, she conceded. He had always behaved in a respectful manner.
Later Pyke accompanied Whicher back to the church, where the body was waiting to be taken to the nearest public house for the inquest. To Pyke’s relief, Wells had already left.
Pyke had never liked churches, their cold, draughty interiors and the hard, functional pews that people, in some instances, had to pay to occupy. Their size was supposed to convey something of God’s majesty, but standing in the aisle, looking towards the altar, all Pyke could think about was how many men had been needed to build it and the pittance they’d doubtless been paid.
Candles had been lit and placed on the table in front of the altar, casting their flickering light upwards and illuminating the plain wooden crucifix that hung above it. It made Pyke think about the Saviour’s Cross and the three men who’d been killed in Cullen’s shop in the summer; even more so since the archdeacon himself was shortly expected at the rectory.
‘So what do you think, Jack?’ Pyke circled around the body, trying to keep warm. ‘Did Hiley kill him?’
‘People here certainly seem to think so. And I have to say, it doesn’t look good for him.’
Pyke nodded. It was a fair conclusion, even if the investigation was still at an early stage. Since the summer, he had come to rely on Whicher more and more, and now they both seemed to feel comfortable in each other’s presence. Pyke had started to treat him as an equal rather than a subordinate, and the others in the Detective Branch had noticed this. Increasingly, they had formed their own faction, from which Pyke and Whicher had been excluded. Whicher hadn’t expressed any real concern at this situation and, in actuality, it suited Pyke very well.
‘Doesn’t it strike you as odd that a rector should live in such comfort? Five servants, two gardeners.’ Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, ‘And yet he still needs to employ an odd-job man.’
‘Apparently it’s a wealthy parish, one of the wealthiest in the city. That might explain the servants. But you’re right about the need for an odd-job man.’
‘What about Guppy himself? Aside from Nutt, none of the servants spoke particularly warmly about him.’
Whicher nodded. ‘I know; and what kind of man would wear his surplice just to take the night air?’ Earlier, they’d looked for, and been unable to find, the surplice anywhere in the church or the yard.
Pyke smiled at Whicher’s remark. ‘We also shouldn’t lose sight of the
way
he was killed.’
way
he was killed.’
‘The fact that someone took a hammer and went to work on Guppy’s face until there was nothing left.’
‘Exactly. Whoever did it didn’t just want to kill him. If they did, they could have used a knife or a pistol.’
‘To be that close to someone and swing a hammer at their head: you’d really have to hate that person.’
‘We also don’t know what Guppy was doing in the churchyard,’ Pyke said. ‘I don’t believe for a moment he was simply going for a walk.’
‘It’s bitterly cold. Why would you venture out unless you had to?’
‘Perhaps he’d arranged to meet someone.’
‘To do what?’
‘I don’t know,’ Pyke said. ‘Why do people meet up in places like churchyards late at night?’
Whicher was smiling. He had come to appreciate Pyke’s dark sense of humour. ‘Maybe that’s why he took off his surplice.’
‘Just his surplice?’
‘But he was fully clothed when they found him,’ Whicher said, still smiling.
Pyke shrugged. ‘Maybe Guppy didn’t get as far as he’d expected to.’
When Pyke finally arrived home, he found Felix asleep in the armchair beside Godfrey’s bed, a Bible resting in his lap. Pyke’s gaze drifted between his son and his uncle, and as he stood watching them, he tried not to think about how little time he had spent at Godfrey’s side since he had collapsed two weeks earlier.
‘You’re up early,’ Felix said, lifting his head and forcing open one of his eyes. ‘Or back late.’
After Pyke’s injury in the summer, there had been a rapprochement of sorts between them, but throughout the autumn the distance had gradually started to open up again and Godfrey’s sudden collapse had put them at loggerheads once more. The issue, for Felix, was Pyke’s apparent lack of concern. For his part, Pyke had done all he could; he had paid for the best doctor and a full-time nurse. Deep down, he was as desperately worried about the old man’s health as Felix, but he simply couldn’t give up his work, and Felix had started to resent this.
Pyke took the other armchair and pulled it closer to the bed. ‘How is he?’
‘No better, no worse, according to the doctor.’ Felix sat up, stretched his shoulders and yawned.
‘What did he say?’
‘Just that. No change in his condition. He told us to keep trying to give Uncle Godfrey food and water.’
Pyke stared at the plate of uneaten food and the glass of water on the floor next to the bed. Since the collapse, Godfrey had said very little and had barely eaten a thing, and now the skin was hanging off his face and neck.
‘At least it means he’s not getting any worse,’ Pyke said, mostly for Felix’s benefit.
He wasn’t sure how much his son knew, how much the doctor had told him, but as far as Pyke was aware, the prognosis was not good. Certainly there seemed little chance that Godfrey would make a full or even a partial recovery. Pyke looked at the bags under his son’s eyes and asked how he felt. Felix shrugged and said he was fine, even though it was clear he’d had almost no sleep. Since the collapse, Pyke had allowed Felix to stay at home, to be with Godfrey, but in recent days he’d been forced to question the wisdom of this decision. Was it healthy for a boy of his age to sit indoors all day with nothing to do and no one to talk to? Still, Pyke knew he wouldn’t be able to raise this issue without Felix coming back at him.
I have to be here
,
because you never are
.
I have to be here
,
because you never are
.
‘Seriously, you look terrible,’ Pyke said. ‘Go and lie down. I’ll sit with him for a while.’
‘You don’t look too good yourself. What kept you up all night?’
‘Work.’
Felix rolled his eyes and they sat for a while in silence, both staring down at Godfrey’s sleeping form.
‘I see you’ve been reading the Bible.’ Pyke gestured at the book, which had fallen on to the floor.
‘So?’
‘I didn’t know you’d embraced religion.’
‘I haven’t
embraced
religion.’ Felix sighed. ‘I was just reading aloud to Godfrey. Where’s the harm in that?’
embraced
religion.’ Felix sighed. ‘I was just reading aloud to Godfrey. Where’s the harm in that?’
Pyke considered this for a short while. ‘I’m sure Godfrey appreciates what you’re doing for him but I know he’s never found solace in the Bible.’
Felix reddened slightly. He went to retrieve his copy of the Bible and held it closely to his chest.
‘Did they give you that at school?’
It was a trick question and Felix knew it. ‘You know they don’t teach us the Bible, so why do you even ask?’
‘So where did you get it from?’
‘Believe it or not, Pyke, the Bible is freely available.’ Defiantly, Felix held his gaze. ‘I pray for Godfrey to get better. What’s so terrible about that?’
‘And you think it’s in God’s power to make Godfrey better?’ Pyke paused. ‘He’s a very old, sick man.’
‘I know he’s sick. Remember,
I’m
here.
I’m
the one tending to him.’ Felix stopped, sensing he’d said too much, and then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Pyke. I didn’t mean . . . I know you’re as upset as I am.’
I’m
here.
I’m
the one tending to him.’ Felix stopped, sensing he’d said too much, and then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Pyke. I didn’t mean . . . I know you’re as upset as I am.’
Pyke went over and put his arm around his son’s shoulders and to his surprise Felix did not push him away.
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