The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [138]
Swift watched him carefully but said nothing. He was listening to the rats beneath him.
‘Perhaps I might outline what I think took place,’ Pyke said. ‘You can interrupt me if I have made a mistake or if I require your assistance.’ Again Swift did not respond.
Pyke began by indicating how he believed Swift’s relationship with Edmonton had started. He said they had probably met through the Orange Order and the Brunswick Club and corresponded regularly over issues of mutual concern. The unappealing prospect of Catholic emancipation had certainly been one such issue, and Edmonton had asked Swift to be vigilant for anything they might use to thwart or disrupt the smooth passage of the Catholic Emancipation Bill through Parliament. This had taken place some time in October or even November of the previous year. Six months earlier, Swift had employed the services of Davy Magennis to tend his small plot of land. Magennis had been dismissed from the Irish Constabulary for violent misconduct but had been recommended to Swift by someone in the order. Swift had never particularly liked Magennis but his interest in the big man was piqued by a story he told about his brother, Stephen, who had fallen in love with a Catholic girl and had absconded to London. Magennis had spoken about his brother’s betrayal with an anger that bordered on mania. When Magennis had also revealed that he had once been personally recruited into the constabulary by Tilling, Peel’s emissary in Ulster, Swift had seen an opportunity that was too good to pass up, especially as Peel was openly talking about changing his position on the Catholic question and throwing his support behind the push for emancipation.
But Swift had had to move quickly. He had contacted Edmonton in London and explained what he had discovered and how this information might be used in such a way as to further their cause. Edmonton had been delighted by the idea: that Swift would accompany Davy Magennis to London and talk him into, if any talk were required, killing his brother. For their plan to work, any subsequent investigation would have to establish a connection between Peel and Magennis. They could then claim that Peel had staged the murder in order to bolster support for the police bill that he was attempting to push through Parliament at the same time as Catholic emancipation. In any case, if it could be leaked to the newspapers that a Protestant man from Ulster had been murdered, seemingly by a Catholic, then such news would, no doubt, spark a wave of anti-Catholic protests that might end up blowing Peel’s plans out of the water. Edmonton had assumed responsibility for planning events in the capital. He had paid someone to track down Stephen Magennis and his mistress and given some consideration to how he might ensure that the subsequent investigation into the murders would unearth the connection between Davy Magennis and Peel.
This was the moment when Edmonton had struck upon the notion of using Pyke. He had known, for a fact, that Pyke was a formidable investigator. If it could somehow be arranged that Pyke discovered the dead bodies, he would have to be a part of any investigation, and given his tenacity and contrariness, he might begin to suspect some kind of conspiracy. If not, he could always be pushed in such a direction once the investigation had commenced. In any case, Pyke could be used and then discarded once his purpose had been served.
Pyke paused for a moment. Swift seemed to be more preoccupied by the sound of rats. Pyke continued with his narrative.
Swift was, by no means, a papist sympathiser. After all, he had grown up in the Orange Order and had been initiated into a way of thinking that saw Catholics as both a threat and a menace. Nonetheless, he was not