Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch [129]
The most recent book on the subject I could find had been from 1936, and written by a guy called Lucius Brock. He’d speculated that vestigia were laid down in layers like archaeological deposits, and that different spirits inhabited different layers. I was going to Wall-penny in the late Victorian era and he was going to lead me to Henry Pyke in the late eighteenth century and Pyke, whether he wanted to or not, would reveal his last resting place.
I’d made it as far as the top of Drury Lane when the Victorian era drove me retching to my knees. I’d been getting used to the pervading smell of horseshit but the 1870s was like sticking your head into a cesspit. It may have been vestigia, but it was strong enough to heave my imaginary lunch into the filthy gutter. I tasted blood in my mouth and realised that some of that was my own – no doubt fuelling whatever occult shit Molly was doing to keep me here.
Bow Street was crammed with enormous carts and high-sided vans drawn by horses the size of decent family hatchbacks. This was Covent Garden at its height, and I expected Wallpenny’s skeleton badge to lead me down Russell Street to the Piazza but instead it pulled me to the right, up Bow Street, towards the Royal Opera House. Then the carts changed shape and I realised that I was too far back in time and that something had gone wrong with Plan A.
As if being cleared for the start of the next scene, the heavy carts vanished from outside the Opera House. The sky dimmed and the street became dark, lit only by torches and oil lamps. The ghost images of gilded carriages drifted past me while bewigged and perfumed ladies and gentlemen promenaded up and down the steps of the old Theatre Royal. A group of three men caught my eye. They seemed to be more solid than the other figures, denser and more real. One of them was a large elderly man in a big wig who walked stiffly with the aid of a stick – this had to be Charles Macklin. The light clung to him as if he were being singled out for a close-up – no prizes for guessing who by.
This, I assumed, was going to be a re-enactment of the infamous murder of Henry Pyke by the dastardly Charles Macklin and, right on cue, enter Henry Pyke in velvet coat and a state of high emotion, his wig askew and an outsized stick in his hand.
Only, I recognised the face. I’d first seen it on a cold January morning and it had introduced itself as Nicholas Wallpenny – late of the Parish of Covent Garden. But no, not Nicholas Wallpenny, it was Henry Pyke. It was always Henry Pyke, right from the start, from the portico of the Actor’s Church, making the most of his chirpy cockney impression. Well, at least it explained why Wallpenny wouldn’t show himself in front of Nightingale. It also meant that the scene at the church that had led me to my impromptu excavation of a priceless London landmark had been just that – a scene, a performance.
‘Help, help,’ cried one of Macklin’s companions, ‘murder!’
Some things are universal: birds got to fly, fish got to swim, fools and policemen got to rush in. I managed to restrain myself from shouting ‘oi’ as I ran forward, and as a result got within two metres before Henry Pyke saw me coming. I got a very satisfying ‘oh fuck’ expression from him and then his face changed – he became the ludicrous quarter-moon caricature that I had come to know as Mr Punch, spirit of riot and rebellion.
‘You know,’ he squeaked, ‘you’re not nearly as stupid as you look.’
Standard operating procedure for dealing with mad fuckers; keep them talking, sidle closer, grab them when they ain’t looking.
‘So was that you pretending to be Nicholas Wall-penny?’
‘No,’ said Mr Punch. ‘I let Henry Pyke do all the deception, lives to act, poor thing, it’s all he ever wanted out of life.’
‘Except he’s dead,’ I said.