When Knox reached the end of the lane, the dog was still following him, but at the junction with the mail coach road to Dundrum, the dog stopped and sat down in the middle of the track. Perhaps it thought Knox was simply going to work, and would be back as usual later that day. Knox thought about calling out to it one more time, giving it a farewell pat on the head, but he decided a clean break would be better. He turned and walked twenty paces along the road to Dundrum before looking behind him. Tom hadn’t moved but his head was cocked slightly to one side. Knox knew that it was no time for sentiment but it struck him that he’d done the dog a disservice by not putting it out of its misery.
FIFTEEN
SUNDAY, 22 NOVEMBER 1846
Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales
The next morning Pyke woke early and decided to walk into town. The overnight rain had cleared and the air smelled clean. At the station-house, he asked for Jones, but the superintendent hadn’t yet arrived. One of the constables recognised Pyke and explained there had been more trouble in China: he didn’t know the details or whether there had been any more fatalities. Outside the station-house, a red-faced clerk caught up with Pyke and thrust a letter into his hand.
The writing was Felix’s. Pyke tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter. All seemed to be well in Somerset. This calmed him a little. Felix made reference to his visit there and to the kidnapped child. Pyke then diverted his attention to the last few lines. I’ve been given a few days’ holiday from my studies. I plan to visit you in Merthyr for a day or two. He stared down at the page. I’ll arrive some time on Sunday the twenty-second. He went to check the date at the head of the letter. The seventeenth.
Pyke took a moment to compose himself. Today was the twenty-second so Felix would be arriving in Merthyr some time that day. He would almost certainly travel up on the train from Cardiff, but how many services were there on a Sunday? Pyke followed the clerk back into the building.
‘Will you be on duty for the rest of the day?’
Startled by the change in Pyke’s tone, the clerk took a moment to answer. ‘Yes… yes, I will.’
‘All day?’
‘All day.’
‘My son Felix may turn up here looking for me. If he does, I wonder if you could keep him here and send word for me up at the Castle.’
The clerk gave him a bemused nod. ‘That shouldn’t be a problem, sir.’
Pyke thrust a silver coin into the man’s reluctant hand. ‘Write me a note, to be opened only by me. Please don’t just pass on a verbal message.’
Just to be on the safe side, he didn’t want anyone at the castle to know Felix was visiting him. He didn’t yet know who were his friends, and who were his enemies.
At the railway station Pyke was told there was just one service from Cardiff and it would arrive at four in the afternoon. He was now looking forward to Felix’s visit. He hadn’t been aware of how much he missed home until he’d received the letter. He missed the comfortable feel of their house, its smell, the presence of his three-legged mastiff, now almost fifteen and blind in one eye. He missed drinking wine in his armchair, pulled up close to the fire. He missed his son, too, but Felix had been gone for a while.
What kind of home, he wondered as he entered the Castle, had this been for Cathy and her son? He didn’t imagine it had been a happy one. As he crossed the hall, he remembered his dream from the previous night. Frederick Shaw had been in it. Felix as well. Something terrible had happened, but he couldn’t remember what. He’d woken before dawn, his back bathed in sweat. The room still smelled of Cathy, of what they had done.
But Cathy wasn’t waiting for him now. Instead Jonah Hancock appeared from the library and beckoned him over. The ironmaster’s face was full of fury and Pyke feared the worst.
There was a newspaper laid out on the table. The Merthyr Chronicle — the town’s other newspaper. Without speaking, Jonah pointed at the report in the far left-hand column. Riot in Merthyr.
It described the events of Friday afternoon — the door-to-door search by the town’s constabulary. It reported that there had been minor disturbances and, right at the end of the piece, it speculated that the police had been searching for a missing child. It didn’t mention the Hancocks by name, nor did it say that the child belonged to one of the town’s eminent families.
‘I can see why you’re angry but there’s no mention of your family or William here. No one will think to connect this to you.’
‘No?’ Jonah Hancock scrunched the newspaper into a ball and hurled it across the room. ‘The fewer people who know what’s happened to William, the safer he will be. That’s what you said.’
Pyke watched the blood rise in the ironmaster’s face.
‘Think about it. There’s no way the newspaper could have found out about the exact reason for the search,’ Pyke said, hoping to placate Hancock. ‘But this is a small community and I’m afraid that word of what’s happened to your son is bound to spread sooner or later. Can you be absolutely certain that none of the servants has mentioned that William is missing to a friend or family member?’
Hancock told him that the household staff had all been sworn to secrecy, although he seemed to know as well as Pyke that people were bound to gossip.
Pyke looked at the shelves stacked high with books and wondered how many of them the ironmaster had actually read. It struck him, too, that no one had told him very much about William. No one had talked about what kind of a lad he was, what he liked to do, what made him laugh, what made him cry. Pyke tried to remember Felix at the same age. What had they talked about? Felix had always been a warm-hearted boy but Pyke hadn’t been an especially attentive father.
‘By the way, I was wondering whether you’d managed to locate my son’s former nursemaid,’ Jonah Hancock said.
‘You mean, as a possible suspect?’
The ironmaster shrugged.
‘I put this point to your wife. She assured me it would be impossible as Maggie Atkins has found work far away from here.’
Hancock gave him a look he couldn’t quite interpret. ‘Since you’re here, we should go to my study to discuss arrangements for tomorrow.’
Pyke followed him back through the entrance hall and along a wide passageway to a large oak-panelled room at the back of the Castle. There, Jonah Hancock unlocked the door of a safe, built into the wall. Reaching inside, he scooped up a large cloth sack, then turned around and emptied its contents on to the desk. There was, he said, a thousand pounds in coins and nineteen thousand in Bank of England notes. He urged Pyke to count it.
Pyke stared at the pile of gold coins and the neat stacks of notes held together with string. ‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary.’
Hancock stood beside the desk, his hands resting on the edge. ‘In my original letter I promised you a certain fee.’
‘We can talk about that when your son is returned to you safe and well.’
Hancock returned to the safe and took out a much thinner stack of banknotes, then slid them across the desk. ‘A thousand, just as I promised.’
Pyke stared at Hancock. ‘I wouldn’t usually expect to be paid until my work was finished.’
‘Take it.’ The ironmaster ran his hand through his hair and made an effort to smile. ‘I’m happy with what you’ve done.’
Pyke let his fingers rest on top of the stack of notes. ‘But what if, heaven forbid, something were to go wrong tomorrow?’
Hancock was gathering up the twenty thousand and putting it back into the cloth sack. ‘I think it’s best I settle my debt now, don’t you? If something bad were to take place, and I hope and pray for all our sakes that it doesn’t, I’m not sure that doing so would be foremost in my mind.’