‘What’s in it for you, Pyke? I mean, from what I can see, there’re plenty of tarts in the city, more ’n enough to go round.’
‘If you have anything worth telling me, you can leave a message at Lizzie’s place, next to Smithfield.’
She gave him an amused look. ‘Is it true love, then? You and Lizzie Morgan?’
He turned to leave.
‘That lass, Mary, she came and went as she pleased. Not the kind of girl I much care for. Two days ago, when I weren’t ’round, Mary crept in ’ere and cleared what little she had out of her room and scarpered. Vanished into thin air.’
This made Pyke turn around. ‘You say this happened two days ago?’
‘One of the gals might know where she went. And if I manage to dig it out of ’em, you’ll be ’earing from me, Pyke. Keep that money for me. I’ll want it paid in legal notes, too.’
Because it seemed to be a solid lead, Pyke said that if he managed to locate Mary Johnson as a result of her information, he would pay her fifty pounds.
Downstairs in the taproom, a man that Pyke recognised but whose face he could not place lunged towards him through a crowd of drunken bodies. Pyke stepped to one side with ease and the knife that the man had been carrying sank deep into the flabby midriff of someone standing next to him. Pyke cocked his elbow back and punched it into the helpless face of his attacker, heard the bone in his nose crumple, and watched as the man careened sideways and sprawled on to the wet floor, taking down a dozen grown men as though they weren’t any more substantial than a set of wooden skittles.
Godfrey Bond’s publishing business, if it could be called that, was located in the basement of a building in St Paul’s Yard, number seventy-two, which had once been home to the renowned publisher Joseph Johnson. Now, though, despite its proximity to Wren’s great cathedral with its magnificent dome, the neighbourhood was an uninspiring one and, in recent years, had lost what little sheen remained, as pawnshops and lodging houses took over from more respectable businesses. Before long, his uncle often said, with amusement, the whole area would be awash with taverns, chop houses and slop shops.
Pyke found his uncle hunched over a manuscript in the back of the shop. Around him were piles upon piles of messily stacked books, pamphlets, papers and newspapers.
Godfrey looked up, saw it was Pyke and said he’d hoped it might have been a choirboy from the cathedral, lost and wanting his help. ‘If it isn’t enough I’ve got people sniping about the integrity of what I publish, I’ve also had word back from the pedlars who hawk my penny dreadfuls that readers think the stuff is boring and not nearly salacious enough. Meanwhile, I’m only too aware that what I’ve been putting out of late has been unoriginal, but there are quite simply no new stories, no one stimulating enough to write about. Defoe had Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard. Who have I got?’ His uncle gave him a calculating look. ‘Of course, if you were to agree to—’
Pyke cut him off. ‘No, Godfrey. You know what I think about that.’
‘Folk are bored with material like Life in London. They want the real thing. That’s why Vidocq’s memoirs are selling so well. They’re calling him the first detective.’
‘People like Vidocq because he’s a rogue.’
‘Exactly, dear boy.’ Godfrey smiled. ‘You wouldn’t have to write it yourself. I’d get a proper writer, not one of those horrible balladeers. You wouldn’t have to write the damn thing or even put your own name to it.’
‘I value anonymity.’
‘Ha, that’s why you walk into any tavern in the city and people sink into their seats or crawl up the walls.’
‘I don’t want my life becoming public property.’
‘It’s not as if I’d expect you to tell me the truth, dear boy. My readers don’t give a damn about the truth. They just want a good story with someone they can cheer for. We could even make you look good.’ He glanced at Pyke and shrugged. ‘Or bad, if you wanted to be bad. Good or bad. Just not both at the same time. It confuses people. They can’t work out whether to shout for the man or rail against him.’
‘You know what my answer’s going to be. I don’t know why you bother to ask . . .’
Godfrey nodded glumly. ‘It gives you some indication of how bad things are.’ He went to fill his glass from the jug but noticed it was empty. ‘I assume you’ve read about the murders in St Giles? It’s an awful business, I know, but if I could somehow get my hands on that story, well, it would sell like hot pies. Times like this, people need answers and explanations. You should’ve heard some of the preposterous tales that folk are spinning. One lad thought it was King Herod, returning to finish the job, another reckoned it was the vengeful ghost of Queen Caroline. These weren’t the brightest minds, you’ll understand.’
Pyke thought about not telling his uncle about his involvement in the events of the previous few days, beginning with the discovery of the bodies, fearing it might lead to a torrent of unwanted questions. But Godfrey would hear about it sooner or later and Pyke decided the news would be better coming from him.
To his surprise, though, the first thing that his uncle did, once he had been told the whole story, was to touch Pyke gently on the knee, look him in the eye and ask how he was bearing up.
Pyke had always felt it necessary to guard against his uncle’s attempts to solicit favours from him. Yet as he looked into Godfrey’s guileless eyes, he couldn’t help but feel moved by the concern in them. Pyke started to open his mouth, but the extent to which recent events had unsettled him suddenly made him feel weak and the words wouldn’t come. He thanked Godfrey for his concern and assured him everything would be fine.
Godfrey shrugged as though he did not believe Pyke. ‘That other business you were asking about. You know.
Lord Edmonton. I did a little digging.’
In the strains of the past few days, Pyke had almost forgotten about Edmonton and the robberies. He made a mental note not to overlook Swift and the question of what had taken him to the St Giles lodging house in the first place.
‘It would appear that Edmonton’s estate is in some trouble. The usual thing: the cost of maintenance outstripping the yield from rents. You mentioned his brother William, the banker. My source claimed that the brother’s bank has been propping up Edmonton’s estate for a while and keeping the lord himself in clover. He hadn’t heard anything about the robberies, though. I’m afraid I can’t help you there.’
Pyke thought about Hambledon Hall, Edmonton’s shabby country estate, and about the strange act he’d witnessed, the two brothers openly bickering in front of him, Edmonton silencing his apparently weaker sibling.
‘For what it’s worth, I also heard that Edmonton is tight with the King’s brother, the Duke of Cumberland. Damn nasty piece of work, that one. I’d be wary of anyone who claimed him as a friend.’ Godfrey proceeded to regale Pyke with stories that he had already heard. Apparently Cumberland had once raped Lady Lyndhurst; he had also driven Lord Graves to suicide, possibly raped his own sister and, on one occasion, having received a blow on the head in the middle of the night from his valet in a botched assassination attempt, Cumberland had, according to some accounts, slit the man’s throat and then convinced the authorities his valet had committed suicide. Godfrey also repeated rumours to the effect that Cumberland was engaged in a dastardly plot to poison the young Princess Victoria in order to steal the crown for himself and safeguard the Protestant ascendancy.
Godfrey pulled down his wine-stained shirt to cover his girth. ‘You also asked about the mother.’ He watched Pyke suspiciously. ‘And the daughter.’
Pyke nodded but said nothing.
‘The daughter, Emily, is an acquaintance of Elizabeth Fry. She’s a committed reformer or an interfering do- gooder, depending on your point of view. They visit prisons, asylums and even factories, and write reports as a way of pressuring the authorities to improve conditions. Most of ’em are your wearisome God-bothering types, motivated by the usual nonsense about bringing the poor to the Lord, as though prayer and a few homilies about the Almighty will put food in their stomachs. Apparently this one doesn’t do the work for the glory of God. I asked Reverend Foote about her. As the Ordinary, he knows her quite well. He doesn’t much care for the reforming type but he told me something you might find interesting. Edmonton is not the kind of man who would readily allow his only unmarried daughter even the tiniest smidgen of freedom or the financial support to carry out work he, no doubt, regards as unbecoming.’
Pyke affected a frown. ‘What are you telling me?’
‘Well,’ Godfrey said, enjoying himself, ‘at the time of their marriage, control of the Hambledon estate, as the law demands, passed from wife to husband, but I’m told that the marriage settlement included a number of unusual
