The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [122]
‘What’s his address, anyway?’
‘Can’t you tell me what this is all about, Pyke?’
‘His address.’
‘He lives in Bloomsbury somewhere. I can’t remember offhand which street it is. Gerrard would know.’ He smiled apologetically.
‘Tomorrow, then. I’ll come for both addresses at the same time.’
‘Of course.’ Fox fiddled with his moustache, as he did whenever he was nervous. ‘But tell me where I can contact you. I’ll send someone with the information.’
Pyke thought about this for a moment. ‘No, I think I’ll contact you.’
‘Really, Pyke, all this cloak-and-dagger stuff . . .’
Pyke cut him off and turned to leave. As he did so, the old man called out his name. Pyke spun around just as Fox was saying, ‘You’re much . . .’
‘Much what?’
‘You were never a warm person. I fancy the same could be said about me. Maybe that’s why we were able to work together. But even compared to that, you’re colder somehow, colder and harder . . .’
Fox’s eyes glowed like hot coals behind amber glass, as though his righteous sense of disappointment were beyond Pyke’s comprehension.
The stout physician peered down at Sarah Blackwood’s wizened frame and gently tapped his hand against her chest. Throughout his examination, the old woman said nothing; nor did she appear to know where she was, or even that she had been moved from the asylum in Portsmouth. From the threshold of the small room, Pyke watched the proceedings with interest. Behind him, in the adjoining kitchen, the nurse he had hired was preparing dinner. The apartment was situated on the south bank of the river within a stone’s throw of Blackfriars Bridge. He had paid three months’ rent in advance. The nurse had cost him an additional ten guineas a week.
‘You say she has been housed in an asylum for the past fifteen years?’ the physician asked, once he had completed his examination.
‘As far as I am aware.’
‘And you do not know of the circumstances that led to this state of affairs in the first place?’
‘I have been told her malady, if indeed she was ill at all, was not a serious one.’
The physician nodded. ‘She displays no signs of active cogitation. She doesn’t seem to be cognisant of the outside world.’
‘In your opinion,’ Pyke asked, ‘is she mad?’
That drew a short chuckle. ‘It would depend on what you mean by mad, sir.’ He went to retrieve his hat and coat. ‘But if she was not affected by any illness when she first entered this asylum fifteen years ago, your mother is by no means a well or sane woman today.’
Pyke let the remark about ‘his’ mother pass. ‘Is her condition likely to change?’
‘You mean is it likely to improve or worsen?’
Pyke nodded.
‘In my opinion, your mother’s malady is so deep rooted that she will never be roused from her torpor.’
After the physician had left and the nurse had retired for the night, Pyke sat with Emily’s mother in the dark and held her bony hand in his own.
TWENTY-TWO
The stone-clad exterior of Newgate prison, long since blackened by smoke and filth, did an acceptable job of concealing what lay inside: the dirty wards, the cold, barren cells and the stink of despair. To the uninitiated, it may have seemed like an ordinary building, but to those who lived in the nearby maze of streets and alleyways, the prison’s imposing walls and brooding Palladian architecture cast a dark shadow over the entire neighbourhood. Even the name conjured up dread. Bare-footed children who scampered alongside cabs and the new omnibuses, begging for coins, did not seem to notice its horrible pall. But others, like the group of labouring men gathered outside the Fortune of War tavern, or the hunchbacked man selling Yarmouth herring from an old wicker basket, or the drunken ballad singer who visibly swayed from side to side as he regaled whoever would stop and listen with songs, seemed to be visibly affected by their proximity to the prison.
Fifty years earlier a Protestant mob had rampaged through the streets around the prison and, armed with crowbars and pitchforks, had attacked it in order to free fellow rioters who had been imprisoned within its walls.