The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [47]
‘But you do believe he killed them?’
Mary shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Honestly I don’t.’
‘But it’s possible that he did it?’
Her stare was devoid of emotion. ‘I fancy it is. The longer you live, the more you realise that anything’s possible. Even something as terrible as what happened.’
Once Pyke had deposited a bedraggled Mary Johnson and a grateful Gerry in a guest house in Isleworth, paid for a week’s accommodation and warned them not to go anywhere or talk to anyone without his consent, he told Gaines to return him to Bow Street. As he sat in the carriage on the journey back to the city, Pyke considered what Mary had told him and thought about the implications for his own investigation.
He was close, now, to finding the real killer, not the unfortunate lunatic who was currently being held by Hume. For a lot of reasons, Davy Magennis seemed to be the likely candidate. From the start, Pyke had believed that whoever had murdered Stephen, Clare and the baby had known his victims. Nothing about the scene suggested a random attack. It had been premeditated and, Pyke had felt all along, motivated by hate. And now, according to Mary, Davy Magennis had been sighted in London: Davy Magennis, who was uneducated, physically strong and driven by hate; a man who had perhaps lost sight of familial links to his brother.
Mary Johnson was intelligent and credible. Pyke believed everything she had told him.
Pyke was now certain that Charles Hume and his investigative team had arrested and charged the wrong man. But he didn’t necessarily believe that Hume was corrupt. Pressure for a quick arrest had, no doubt, been forthcoming from Peel and charging an escaped Bedlamite was politically expedient. So how might Hume, or for that matter Peel, react to Pyke’s news? It was hard to judge. Or rather Peel was hard to judge. Hume would reject his claim outright and would threaten Pyke, should he continue with his own investigation. Peel, though, would have to be sensitive to the political implications associated with convicting and, doubtless, killing the wrong man. For Peel knew about Pyke’s relationship with Fox and would be only too aware that Fox continued to wield enough political clout to cause him considerable embarrassment.
Peel could not afford to ignore his claims.
Pyke thought about taking his discoveries directly to Fox but he was concerned that Sir Richard simply wanted to use the investigation as a stick to beat the government with. Fox didn’t care about the dead. Nor did Peel or Hume. But out of all of them, Peel was the one who could assist or damage Pyke’s cause and, for this reason, Pyke made up his mind to present his findings, in the first instance, to the Home Secretary, and give him the chance to pull Hume into line.
Pyke leaned out of the window of the carriage and shouted at Gaines, the driver, to take him directly to Whitehall. Outside, the branches of the trees were just beginning to thaw and the first signs of green were starting to show themselves. As he blew into his cupped hands to keep them warm, Pyke thought about the dead baby, more than anything irritated that it continued to unsettle him in a way he did not understand.
Pyke knew it would be hard to secure an audience with Peel himself, at least in the first instance. Peel, after all, had instructed him to deal either with Hume or Fitzroy Tilling.
Still, he did not imagine it would be quite so difficult to convince the guards outside the Home Office to even ask inside the building for Tilling. None of them seemed to know who Tilling was. Pyke explained that he was Peel’s private secretary and offered them a brief description. He introduced himself as a Bow Street Runner working at the behest of the Home Secretary himself. He said he had urgent business to share with Peel. He said they would have to shoulder the responsibility, should his news fail to reach Peel, via Tilling. It was only when he made it clear that it was a matter of the utmost importance to the security