The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [116]
Already, he had spoken with the new Metropolitan Police commissioners and had taken the step of employing his own private operatives.
‘I heard him and my uncle talking. My father is convinced that someone currently working in the bank supplied you with information about the transfer of money.’
‘Do you think that he suspects you?’ Pyke asked, wondering now whether Emily did, in fact, know about his indiscretion with Jo.
‘I am certain he has no idea about the extent of our . . . liaison.’ Her mood seemed to darken. ‘But I had to fight him to allow me to stay here even for one night.’
On the table in the large bay window was the same evening-newspaper report that he had consulted. ‘Contrary to what the report claimed, there wasn’t anything like twenty thousand pounds.’ He removed a sealed envelope from his pocket. ‘That’s a small contribution for your charity.’
Emily stared at the envelope, as though it were a dagger. He thrust it into her trembling hands. ‘Here. Take it.’
‘I can’t.’ She allowed the envelope to drop on to the Turkey carpet.
‘Can’t or won’t?’
She exhaled loudly. ‘A man was killed. Two others, a guard and the driver, are grievously injured. The driver may never walk again.’ She looked up at him. Her eyes were dry. ‘Was he a friend of yours?’
‘The man who was killed?’ Pyke didn’t know whether to be relieved that she didn’t seem to know about his foolishness with Jo or concerned that something new had come between them.
Emily nodded.
‘He understood the risks. It was a robbery.’
‘Did the driver of the coach understand the risks, too?’
Pyke allowed a little of his frustration to show. ‘What do you want me to say? That I regret what happened to him? That I’m sorry for what we did?’
‘Perhaps,’ Emily said, staring down at the envelope on the carpet.
‘If I felt that way, then we shouldn’t have undertaken the robbery in the first place.’ It was as though he had punched her in the stomach.
For a while, the only sound in the room was the ticking of the grandfather clock. ‘Does it fill you with satisfaction,’ she asked, finally, ‘that I’ve now been initiated into your world?’ There was weariness rather than bitterness in her tone.
‘My world? And what exactly is my world? If you are referring to a place where one has to take hard decisions that, in turn, have unedifying consequences, then it does fill me with satisfaction.’
His remarks stung her, as they were meant to. ‘Do you really think the work I do is straightforward and doesn’t require having to make hard choices?’
‘Perhaps not, but surely this experience has softened your attitude to other people’s failings?’
‘When people are powerless and cannot help themselves, I am more than sympathetic to their plight,’ she snapped.
Pyke waited for some of her anger to cool. ‘Then you should understand that decisions, taken in rushed circumstances, sometimes lead to unpleasant outcomes.’
This didn’t entirely placate her. She laughed bitterly. ‘And in the end, one cannot tell right from wrong.’
‘Perhaps right and wrong are not the absolute markers you imagine them to be.’
Emily’s gaze betrayed her disappointment. ‘Is it right that children as young as six have to work for fifteen hours a day in windowless rooms for only a few shillings a week?’
‘Or that an aristocrat arranges the slaughter of innocent people for no other reason than to satisfy his own bigotry?’
Emily stared with consternation but she did not know how to answer him.
‘What if punishing this person could not be achieved without hurting other people?’
‘You’re asking me to sanction the loss of innocent lives as a way of legitimising this feud between you and my father?’ She sounded weary.
‘I’m not asking for your sanction.’ Pyke walked across to the bay window. The curtains were drawn. ‘I’m asking for your understanding.’ He turned to face her. ‘You make it sound as though my reasons for hating him are entirely selfish.’
‘So you do hate him?’
‘Don’t you?’
Emily shrugged. ‘I have my reasons.’
Pyke peeked through the curtains and looked down at the empty street below him.