The Last Days of Newgate - Andrew Pepper [99]
Villums shrugged. ‘The magistrates will have to investigate, write a report. They’ll want paying, too. Then there’s the dwarf’s family. They’ll certainly want something.’
Pyke gulped back his gin. ‘I’ll need a loan, as well.’
‘How much?’ Villums stared at him, suspiciously.
‘Twenty or thirty ought to cover it.’ Pyke gazed at Villums, waiting.
‘Pounds?’ The older man had to loosen the collar around his bulbous neck. ‘You’re dressed up like a toff, to go to the opera, and you want to borrow money off a poor man like me? Look at these rags.’ He tugged at his tatty frock-coat.
‘You know I’m good for the money.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Villums sighed. ‘But you’ll have to make yourself scarce tonight. The place’ll be crawling with police. Don’t worry. No one’ll say a word to ’em and I’ll tell ’em I fired the blunderbuss.’
‘Thank you,’ Pyke said. ‘I suppose there’s no word about Godfrey?’
‘Didn’t you hear the news? He’s out. They let him go about a week ago. Dropped the charges.’ Villums scratched his vein-riddled nose and wiped his cheeks. ‘Very coincidental, I know. You don’t reckon someone knows you’re back in London?’
The thought had already crossed Pyke’s mind. ‘If so, they’ll be watching Godfrey’s shop and apartment.’
‘Since they were sworn in at Coram’s Foundling Hospital, they’re fuckin’ everywhere, Peel’s blue devils. Everywhere that’s poor, anyway.’
‘There’s a reward, you know, for my capture. Quite a generous one, I believe.’ Pyke watched Villums’s reaction.
‘A hundred pounds, I’m told. But as poor and desperate as people are, no one will dare collect the reward till they’ve seen you swing.’
‘How reassuring,’ Pyke said, without smiling. ‘Maybe you could pass word to Godfrey that I’m staying here.’
‘You sure that’s a wise idea?’
Pyke shrugged and thought about what Villums had said about not feeling remorse. ‘Do people think I’m a monster?’
‘You really give a damn what people think?’ Villums asked. ‘Back there in the gaming room, you didn’t stand to gain a thing by killing the bear. If you were as self-interested as men sometimes claim you are, then why didn’t you sit back, do nothing and watch the bear maul the duke?’
From his seat in the fifth row of the stalls, Pyke looked through a pair of hired binoculars at the figures in the grandest box of the Theatre Royal. The bell had just sounded and a man appeared on stage announcing that the performance of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia would commence shortly. Along with the rest of the audience, he watched as Emily Blackwood glided elegantly into the box and arranged herself before carefully taking her seat. She wore a delicate pale-pink crêpe dress with thin gauze sleeves that showed just enough of her slender arms; her hair was elaborately tied up, drawing attention to the diamond necklace that was just visible, silhouetted against the milky whiteness of her skin.
It thrilled him to see that she was so obviously trading on her looks for the purposes of the evening - a charity event from which all the money collected during the interval would be donated to her society of women. On their first meeting, he had made the mistake of assuming that her reputation as a do-gooder and her exquisite skills as a pianist marked her as a particular type of woman. Now, as he watched her greet others in the box and noticed the effect she was having on them, especially the men, he felt a pang of jealousy and admiration for the way that she was using her beauty.
For three days since he had arrived back in the city, Pyke had followed Emily at a discreet distance, as she had gone about her business. He had been surprised by the scope and extent of her work; not merely time spent in her organisation’s offices on the Strand but also visits to both prisons and asylums. In one such establishment, a crumbling former nunnery in the village of Stoke Newington, curiosity had compelled him to bear even closer witness to her actions. As far as he understood it, her work involved inspecting premises and living conditions