The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [28]
Townsend assured him he would do whatever he could. ‘Shall we go in?’
Pyke did not want to, but since a further inspection of the room itself seemed necessary, he did not have a choice in the matter. He needed to know more about the victims and this was his last attachment to them, to their world. If, as he believed, the murders were not the work of a crazed madman, an escaped Bedlamite perhaps, then it followed that the victims had been selected and indeed killed for a reason. Find the reason and he would find the killer. Though he had said little to Fox on the subject, Pyke instinctively believed the victims had known their killer or killers.
They stepped into the room.
Apart from the mattress, it had been stripped bare. Even the floorboards had been scrubbed clean, and aside from the dark stains that remained, there was little or nothing to suggest what had taken place there.
Initially, when he had been told about the removal of all possessions to number four Whitehall, Pyke had been disappointed and angry because he had thought their usefulness as clues depended on their physical presence in the room. But as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, Pyke felt relieved by their absence and indeed by the absence of the three bodies. The room seemed both larger and more peaceful. It afforded him the opportunity to think, to put himself in their places and try to imagine what they had gone through. Taking no notice of the dark stain, he sat down against the wall farthest from the door, in the position that he had found Stephen Magennis in, and put his hands behind his back, as though bound.
‘Why did he tie them up?’ Pyke said, half to himself and half to his companion.
He imagined his mouth was gagged, imagined the metal pail in front of him, and closed his eyes.
‘You reckon he tied ’em up before he slit their throats?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Perhaps he tied ’em up in order to slit their throats. Keep ’em still.’
It made some kind of sense but Pyke was not quite convinced. Sitting in the darkness, he tried to imagine what had happened: in what order had the killings taken place? Had the murderer slit the throats of the parents and then throttled the baby? Or had it happened the other way around? What if the parents had witnessed the killing of their baby?
This thought struck him with the force of a lightning bolt. What might it have been like for them: having to watch as their own baby was strangled in front of their disbelieving eyes? To watch, bound and helpless, while someone squeezed the life out of the most precious thing in their life?
‘What if they were tied up because the murderer actually wanted them to witness him killing their baby?’
Townsend was standing on the threshold. His figure was silhouetted in the door frame. ‘Why would he want ’em to witness it?’
‘What if he knew them?’
Townsend did not say anything.
‘What if it was personal?’ Pyke thought about it: what if they had been attacked and knocked unconscious initially, bound and gagged while unconscious, and brought round by having urine thrown into their faces? What if they had been brought round because they were meant to see it happen?
‘That would be a brutal thing,’ Townsend said, guardedly.
‘The two of them were propped up against the wall, where I am. The metal pail was placed in the middle of the room. It resembled a stage. In which case, the parents might have been the audience.’
‘You think someone would be capable of such . . .’
‘Cruelty?’ Pyke said, looking up at Townsend. It was almost impossible to imagine so, but instinct told him it was an idea worth pursuing. It didn’t mean he was any closer to actually finding who had done these things, or why, but it did mean finding out more about the victims would perhaps lead Pyke one step closer to their killer. Or, indeed, their killers, because Pyke could not be sure that only one man was involved.
Townsend shrank back on to the landing. Pyke heard him mutter something