‘Why didn’t you introduce yourself at the outset?’
‘Peel is a divisive figure,’ Pyke said. ‘In my experience, his name doesn’t always open doors.’
‘I know that, for a fact.’ Yellowplush reached out his hand. ‘Let me see the letter.’
Pyke retrieved it from his pocket and gave it to the magistrate, who surveyed the content without much interest. ‘It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t kill you, leave you to bleed to death for what you did in the inn.’
‘You think Peel wouldn’t find out? Or that everyone in the inn who witnessed our card game loves you so much they wouldn’t give you up, if and when Peel’s men have to come looking for me?’
That seemed to register with Yellowplush. He put the pistol back into his belt and shrugged. ‘You’d better come with me, then.’
It was a damp night and the air smelled of wet leaves. The street was deserted and they walked in silence as far as the watch-house where prison cells were visible from the street through iron grilles.
The watch-house was besieged, with men of all ages lining up in an orderly queue that snaked around the building. The magistrate explained they were waiting to be sworn in as special constables. Once this had been done, they would be allocated a weapon of their choice. The selection was a rich one. Lining the wall at the back of the watch-house were brickbats, muskets, shovels, swords, machetes, pick handles and even a few rifles. When Pyke likened the scene to an army preparing to go to war, Yellowplush looked at him and smiled.
‘I take it you’re expecting trouble,’ Pyke said, as he followed the magistrate down a flight of stone steps to the cellar of the watch-house, where the headless body was being stored.
The flickering light given off by the magistrate’s lantern barely illuminated the tomblike corridor.
Pyke smelled the corpse before he saw it, a ripe odour that filled the windowless room.
Yellowplush put the lantern down on the floor and said, ‘I’ll leave you the light. I don’t imagine you’re used to spending time with dead bodies.’
Pyke looked at him. ‘And you are?’ The air around them was cloying, fleshy and sickly.
‘I used to serve in the army. The regiment was travelling to India when the ship caught fire in the Bay of Biscay. A casket of rum split open and one of the ship’s officers dropped a lantern. The fire spread from the hold to the rest of the ship. I was tasked with the job of raising men from their cabins on the port side of the ship towards the stern but the fire spread too quickly for me. The screams of those men will live me with the rest of my days, sir. The next day, after the ship had finally blown up, we discovered the charred remains of a young child. I was there in the boat with his father when we came across it. The sound that came from the man’s mouth was not one I ever want to hear again. So to answer your question, sir, the idea of spending some time in the presence of a dead body doesn’t concern me in the slightest.’
The heels of Yellowplush’s leather boots clicked against the stone as he ascended the stone steps.
The air in the cellar felt cool against Pyke’s skin and it took him a few moments to adjust to his new surroundings. Holding his nose as best he could, Pyke pulled back the sheet, but the stench of rotting, decomposing flesh was too much and he snapped his head backwards, a hot spike of vomit spurting from his mouth. The next time, he whipped the sheet off with a single jerk. Underneath, the bloated corpse looked inhuman, a fatty torso already as stiff as a washboard and discoloured from decomposition, and just a bloody stump where the head had once been. Wiping bile from his mouth, he brought the lantern closer to the corpse and bent down to inspect it further. Pyke’s eyes passed across the corpse’s clammy skin but he couldn’t see an obvious cause of death. There was no stab wound and no visible scars or bruises of any sort except for a cluster of what looked like burn marks at the top of his arm. Four or five reddish circles, no larger than a five-shilling coin. Pyke prodded them with his thumb, trying to work out what might have caused them.
He walked around the corpse a few times, taking note of the thickness of the arms and thighs and the hairiness of the chest and arms. He’d been a young man, Pyke decided, no more than thirty years of age, and physically active, with well-developed leg and arm muscles. There was a zigzag scar running down the length of his forearm and a birthmark on his chest. From the length of the torso and the thick hairs on his chest, Pyke guessed he would have been about six foot, with dark hair. He inspected the cluster of burn marks again, wondering what might have caused them and whether they had, in fact, been inflicted by the killer. Why bother to do this to a man whose head you were about to cut off?
Pyke brought the lantern up to the neck stump and inspected it, trying to work out what instrument had been used in the decapitation. The wound seemed remarkably clean, as though the man’s head had indeed been removed with a couple of swings of an axe rather than hacked off in a less clinical manner. This suggested the act may have been premeditated, that the killer had
planned
to decapitate his victim, but it didn’t begin to suggest why he’d chosen to do so in the first place. Pyke could rule out torture: he was reasonably confident that the decapitation had taken place after the man had died. There were no rope marks around the wrists or ankles, for example, and to cut off someone’s head while they were still alive would definitely require restraints. This left the thorny question of motivation. Why had someone gone to the trouble of decapitating a man they had already murdered? The most obvious answer was that the killer or killers had wanted to conceal the victim’s identity.
‘Where was the body found?’ Pyke asked, once he’d rejoined Yellowplush at the back of the watch-house.
‘A farmer fished him out of the river just to the east of the town.’
Pyke considered this for a moment. ‘Would I be correct in assuming the river flows from west to east?’
Yellowplush nodded.
‘So the body was either dumped into the river where the farmer found it or, more likely, it ended up there having been discarded elsewhere.’ Pyke rubbed his eyes. ‘Who owns the land upstream from where the corpse was found?’
‘Is that relevant?’
‘It might be,’ Pyke said. ‘If you don’t tell me I can always find out from someone else.’
‘Sir Horsley Rockingham.’
‘A friend of yours?’
The magistrate stared at him but declined to answer the question.
‘Are you planning to leave the body down there until it rots?’
‘The body belongs to a local lad. Word spreads slowly in the country. I’m waiting to see if someone decides to claim it.’
‘You know it’s a local lad for certain?’
Yellowplush shrugged.
Pyke nodded. ‘So tell me something. How does an ex-soldier suddenly become a magistrate?’
The question seemed to take Yellowplush by surprise. ‘I don’t take kindly to your insinuation, sir. Remember, you’re here as my guest and, as my guest, your invitation can easily be revoked.’
‘Is that what happened to the dead man?’ Pyke held the magistrate’s stare. ‘Was his invitation revoked, too?’
‘You’d do as well to hold your tongue. The countryside isn’t always the peaceful idyll city folk imagine it is.’
‘I can see that well enough with my own eyes.’ In the yard men were still queuing for weapons.
Yellowplush rearranged his wig and stared out into the darkness. ‘Navvies can be a barbarous lot but we’ll not tolerate their violence. If they try something, we’ll be ready for them.’
‘Why would they
try
something?’ Pyke didn’t bother to hide his scorn. ‘What is it you’re not telling me?’
‘Despite that letter, I’m not obliged to tell you a thing.’ Yellowplush waited for a few moments, his stare intensifying. ‘And in answer to your question, do heathens need a reason to embrace violence?’
‘I don’t know,’ Pyke said, staring directly into his dry eyes. ‘Do they?’
‘I think you’ve officially outstayed your welcome.’ Yellowplush ran the tip of his pink tongue across his pale, flaky lips. ‘I’ll bid you goodnight, sir.’
‘Goodnight
and
good riddance?’
‘Country people don’t much care for city types with their fancy clothes and slick ways.’
‘I’m sure the feeling’s mutual.’
‘If you know what’s good for you you’ll go back to London and leave us to sort out our own troubles.’
‘What if I don’t want to go? What if I’ve taken an inexplicable liking to this dour town of yours?’
Yellowplush took out his pistol once again and thrust it into Pyke’s face. ‘Do you really want me to answer that question?’
Pyke stared down the barrel and said, ‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you that the wig makes you look like an overgrown spaniel?’
The very considerable wealth that Sir Horsley Rockingham had plundered from his sugar plantation and the exploitation of African slaves was on display from the moment Pyke entered the wrought-iron gates of his country estate and approached the huge Queen Anne mansion from the carefully manicured gardens. Beyond the mature oak trees, Pyke could see stables and a paddock where a young woman with blonde hair was riding a chestnut-coloured gelding. Straight ahead, the house, constructed from Portland stone and glistening in the midday sunlight, was four storeys high and twelve windows long. Pyke dismounted from his horse and tied it to a handrail. At the top of the steps, he passed through a pair of Ionic columns and swept uninvited into the entrance hall, where a flustered servant tried to enquire about his business. In the hall, oil paintings by Titian, Van Dyck, Rubens and Gainsborough hung on the walls alongside oriental tapestries.
Pyke found Rockingham eating lunch alone in the dining room. It was an opulent room with high ceilings, rich cornices and ornate gilding. The old man had a white napkin tucked into his collar and was slurping claret from a crystal glass. He greeted the intrusion by spluttering red wine on to his beefsteak.
One wouldn’t have known from looking at him that Rockingham had spent much of his life in the West Indies. Wrinkled with age, his skin had developed a translucent hue that recalled a cadaver rather than a sun-kissed expatriate. Hunched over his food at one end of a long polished table, he cut a frail figure, eaten away from the inside by his own bile, and his eyes, as hard as acorns, darted nervously between Pyke and the servant who had followed him into the room.
‘What’s the meaning of this interruption?’ He addressed the servant rather than Pyke. ‘Can’t you see I’m eating my lunch, boy?’
‘I’m sorry, sir, but this gentleman wouldn’t permit me to ask him his business . . .’
‘Stop bleating, man! Tell this blackguard to leave me in peace and learn some damned manners.’
Pyke wandered across to the polished table and spied the condiments. ‘Perhaps I could pass you the pepper, Sir Horsley. I hear you enjoy smearing it into bloodied flesh.’ Taking the ceramic shaker, he shoved it along the polished surface of the table in the old man’s direction. He made no effort to stop it and the vessel flew off the end of the table, smashing on the wooden floor.
‘Go and fetch the magistrate and his men,’ Rockingham barked at the servant. ‘Damnation, man, didn’t you hear me?’
‘Are you quite certain you want to be left alone in this man’s company, m’lord?’ The servant seemed puzzled, doubtless trying to work out whether Pyke’s smart clothes indicated benevolent intentions.
‘Do you imagine I’m intimidated by this
specimen
?’ Rockingham shuffled across to where Pyke was standing. ‘I lived for fifteen years among three-hundred-odd niggers, all of whom fantasised about killing me.’ He rubbed his finger against Pyke’s cheeks and peered down at it. ‘I reckon you might have some nigger blood in you.’
Hesitating, the servant looked again at Pyke and turned to depart the room, afraid to disobey his master.
‘Before the magistrate’s men arrive and toss you out on your ear like a whipped dog, perhaps you might enlighten me as to the purpose of your unsolicited visit.’
Pyke wandered around to the other side of the table and filled a glass with claret from the decanter. Sitting down on one of the horsehair chairs, he took a sip of the wine and proffered an approving nod. ‘I’m afraid we might be here for quite a while. It would appear that Yellowplush’s ruffians are tied up in Huntingdon. Haven’t you heard? There’s going to be some trouble there involving the navvies.’
Rockingham gave him a peculiar smile. ‘What do you expect if you permit hordes of barbarians to roam around the land on a whim?’
‘I thought they were here to work.’
‘More like piss their wages against the wall and infect our women with the French disease.’
‘In my experience venereal diseases are the gift of the aristocracy.’ Pyke stood up and walked over to the large Venetian window that looked out on to the lawn at the rear of the building. ‘It explains why most of your lot are effete twits who can’t tie their own shoelaces.’
That even drew a chuckle from the old man. ‘I like you, boy. You’re spirited. But a spirited horse won’t always become a champion. That takes discipline and courage. I’d enjoy breaking you in, of course, but I don’t think you possess those qualities. In the end, you’d end up in the slaughterhouse like the rest of the also-rans.’
‘Since you seem to appreciate blunt talking, I’ll try and make this as clear as I can. The Grand Northern Railway will be built across your land whether you like it or not.’
‘You’ll see to it personally?’ Rockingham’s voice was light, even mocking.
‘Flatterers tried to convince Canute he could command the waves to go back but he only attempted to do so in order to ridicule them. You could learn a thing or two from him.’
‘Is that so, boy? Perhaps you don’t know as much as you seem to think.’
Rockingham shuffled over to the fireplace and stood there for a moment, his back to Pyke, while he fumbled at his breeches. Pyke heard the splashes and saw some steam rising from the fire before he realised what was happening. When he’d finished, the older man buttoned up his breeches and turned to face him.