Still, news of the man’s arrest had done little to stem the growing wave of anti-papist violence. A Catholic church on the Whitechapel Road had been burned to the ground. Another had been ransacked and desecrated.
Fox, though, was not interested in stories about mob violence. His ire was directed at Charles Hume’s ‘botched’ investigation.
Briefly Pyke told him about his own argument with Hume and about his hypothesis that the murdered couple were from different religious traditions. Fox muttered something about cover-ups and deception.
He was about to excuse himself when Gerrard, Fox’s personal secretary, appeared in the room, closely followed by a young boy, dressed in rags, who explained he had been told by Miss Lizzie to pass a very ‘hymn- portant’ message to Mr Pyke and that he had been promised a shilling in return. He wanted the shilling before he gave Pyke the message. Pyke procured the money from Fox’s indignant secretary. He glanced down at the note and saw Lizzie’s scribbled writing. Gerrard chased the young boy out of the office and closed the door behind them.
‘Anything important?’ Fox said.
‘I might’ve found the woman.’ The note instructed him to contact Polly Masters at the Rose. Briefly he wondered how much longer Lizzie would continue to come to his assistance when he treated her so poorly.
‘You mean Mary Johnson?’
Pyke just nodded. Fox had remembered her name. ‘Then you must go at once to talk to her.’ Fox’s tone was insistent. ‘Take my personal carriage. It will be quicker than flagging one down. Less costly, too. There’s not a moment to lose.’
Pyke wondered how far he might push Fox’s untypical generosity. ‘I have promised a reward for information leading to Mary Johnson’s whereabouts.’
‘A fee?’ Fox’s expression darkened. ‘What kind of a fee?’
‘A hundred.’
‘Pounds? ’
‘You told me finding the girl was our main priority. I took you at your word.’
‘A hundred pounds?’
‘It’s a lot of money, I know,’ Pyke shrugged. ‘If you don’t think it’s wise to pay it, we can always wait.’
‘Wait? Who said anything about waiting?’ Fox winced, as though he were in pain. ‘But you need to keep a check on your expenditure, Pyke.’
‘I’ll go and see Gerrard.’
‘We’re not awash with money.’
Pyke waited for a moment. ‘Can I ask you a question, Sir Richard?’
‘What is it?’
This time Pyke turned around to face his old mentor. ‘Have you ever had any dealings with Lord Edmonton?’
Carefully Fox placed his pen down on his desk and looked up. ‘Edmonton, you say?’ He ran his finger over the tip of his moustache. ‘He’s one of the Tory Ultras, isn’t he?’
‘All day, I’ve been asking myself how Edmonton knows Flynn has been making certain false accusations against me.’
‘I’m sorry, Pyke, but I fail to see how Lord Edmonton is relevant here.’ But he would not meet Pyke’s gaze.
‘But you haven’t had any communication with him?’ Pyke folded his arms and tried to gauge Fox’s reaction.
‘Why on earth should I have had communications with that Tory bigot?’ Fox was a well-known Whig. He sounded personally hurt by Pyke’s question.
Pyke shrugged. ‘If you hear that anyone has been passing information about me to other . . .’
‘Then I will, of course, tell you about it.’ Fox sighed. ‘Flynn has already been before the grand jury. He’ll stand trial within the week. The scoundrel is currently being held inside Newgate.’ He hesitated. ‘Listen to me, Pyke. I know that you’ve had dealings with this man in the past and I accept that such arrangements are . . . necessary. This is the issue that Peel utterly fails to grasp. Policing can never simply be about prevention. As I’ve tried to impress on Peel many times, prevention makes absolutely no sense without detection. And effective detection, I know, means rubbing shoulders with the likes of Flynn.’ Pyke thought Fox was going to say something else but he picked up his pen and added, almost as an afterthought, ‘Find the girl. That’s the most important thing, Pyke.’
‘Gimme the money and I’ll tell you where you can find the Paddy girl. That’s what we agreed.’ Polly Masters crossed her forearms, as though to affirm the seriousness of her intent.
Pyke removed a ten-pound note from his pocket and held it out for her to see. ‘For now. You’ll get the rest if your information’s good.’
Polly’s frown deepened. ‘If I tell you what I ’eard, I ain’t gonna see you ’gain.’
‘And if I just give you the money and I don’t find this girl, I might not see you again.’
‘I got me business to run. Where am I going?’
‘What we have here is a failure of trust.’ He let the note fall from his fingers and flutter to the floor. They were standing in her drab office. Even though it was only ten in the morning, he could hear a man’s voice through the thin walls, grunting with desire.
As she bent over to retrieve the note, Pyke reached out and gathered up the skin around her neck and pulled her upright, ignoring her chokes and threats. Her plump fingers gripped the ten-pound note as though her life depended on it. He adjusted his one-handed grip around her neck and started to squeeze, and watched as her eyes filled with water and waited for her yells to subside to whimpers.
‘Listen to me, you old hag. You know where the girl is.
I want that information. I find the girl, I might contemplate giving you what I promised. You don’t give me that information right now, then I’ll kill you. Simple as that.’ He squeezed her neck a little harder and kept his stare hard and dry, like a hangman’s or one of the butchers’ who frequented his gin palace and told stories of disembowelling terrified cattle with three swift moves of the cleaver. He felt her limbs loosen, life draining from her.
He slackened his grip, to allow her to speak. He heard her fart. The stink filled up the office.
‘Jonathan Wild was strung up for less than what you do.
And people spat on his dead body.’ But there wasn’t any fight left in her.
He let go of her neck and wiped his hand clean with a handkerchief.
Sullen and beaten, Polly told him that the girl was hiding out at a small lavender farm owned by James Wren on the river at Isleworth.
‘Did you tell anyone else about this?’ He slapped her hard around the face with his open palm. She bit her lip and licked off the blood.
‘Answer me.’
‘No.’
‘You mention this to anyone and I’ll kill you. Do you understand?’
She stared at him, humiliated, but as Pyke left she didn’t once mention the forty pounds he owed her.
Sir Richard Fox’s private carriage, an old-fashioned wooden cab adorned on the inside with silk window curtains and velvet cushions, was pulled by two horses and driven by Gaines, a sour-faced man who seemed to resent having to transport Pyke to his destination, as though the act were somehow beneath him. The carriage transported Pyke through the traffic along Oxford Street and past crowds of people milling around the huge plate- glass windows of new luxury stores. The recently macadamised surface afforded them a smoother passage, as they passed parkland adjoining the Uxbridge Road and Paddington’s grand-looking terraces, decorated with pilasters and ironwork balconies and finished with stucco.
Past Bayswater and Holland House, they rattled on new turnpikes into the countryside, with small farms replacing the West London mansions. The city, which always seemed endless when you were in it, now felt as insignificant as a twig dropping over the edge of a waterfall.
Out here, Pyke felt a sense of release that he had not experienced for a long time. He had once served for three years on the Bow Street horse patrol pursuing thieves and housebreakers along turnpikes and across open land and had, ever since, hankered for country air.
