The church was locked but Knox found the vicar tending to one of the graves in the yard. He was a middle-aged man with a stern face, ink-black hair, deeply inset eyes and a striking Napoleonic nose.
‘I wonder if you could help me. I’m looking for my birth certificate.’ Knox waited for the vicar to stand up.
‘And you are, sir?’
‘John Johns.’ Knox had heard from his mother that the vicar was relatively new in the parish. Knox had never met him before and he wouldn’t have known about Johns. Or indeed Johns’ mother and father, both of whom were long deceased.
‘Gordon Marks.’ He offered his hand and waited for Knox to shake it.
Knox did so. ‘Do you keep the records here?’
‘It depends how far back you want to go.’ Marks rubbed the dirt from his palms. Then he realised that he’d made Knox shake his muddy hand. ‘Sorry about that.’
Knox indicated it was quite all right. ‘1806. March.’
‘They might go back that far.’ Marks looked at him. ‘So you were born in the parish?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Perhaps I know your family?’
‘My mother and father are both dead.’
‘I’m sorry. Where did they live?’
Knox didn’t want to say the lodge-house as that might alert the vicar’s suspicions. ‘A cabin on Castle Field.’
‘And when did they pass away?’
‘Ten years ago.’
The vicar rubbed his jaw. ‘Well, then, let’s see what we can find out.’ He led Knox into the church. Knox hadn’t been inside it for years and it was like stepping back into his former life. Even the smell was familiar; it reminded him of sitting next to his mother.
In the vestry — a high-ceilinged room at the back of the church — Knox waited while Marks consulted some leather-bound tomes stacked on wooden shelves behind a large desk. His thoughts returned to the old days, sitting next to his mother on one of the rock-hard pews, his father at home, sleeping off the ale from the night before. Knox was surprised how much he cherished these memories, a time before Matthew and Peter, when it was just the two of them.
‘1806, you say?’ Marks had heaved one of the volumes off the shelf and put it on the desk.
‘March.’
The vicar nodded and turned over a page, then another, then another. Knox peered over his shoulder.
‘Perhaps you’d permit me to consult my birth certificate in private,’ he said, afraid that the vicar might see something that would alert his suspicions.
Marks looked up, a little flustered. ‘Oh, yes, I see.’ Aware it was a delicate matter, he stood up and pulled down his cassock. ‘I’ll wait outside.’
Knox sat down and turned the pages until he’d found the entries for March. He saw Johns’ name near the bottom of the page. He could hear his own heart thumping.
Born on the tenth day of March eighteen hundred and six.
He let his finger drift across the page but there was no entry in the column for the father’s name. It had been left blank. Fighting back the disappointment, Knox checked to see the mother’s name.
He blinked, couldn’t trust his eyes, had to look again. But it was just as he’d seen it the first time.
Sarah Jane Maguire. His mother’s maiden name.
TWENTY-FOUR
SUNDAY, 13 DECEMBER 1846
Merthyr Tydfil, Wales
P yke came upon the churchyard from the path and looked beyond the headstones at the church itself, boxy and deserted. Cathy Hancock had visited regularly, to tend the grave of her deceased daughter. Now she and her son were also dead. Perhaps William Hancock had been buried next to his sister, Pyke thought, whereas Cathy had been left to rot in an underground passageway built by her father-in-law as an escape route, and used by her husband to smuggle prostitutes into his bed. Did Jonah and Zephaniah Hancock know that Cathy had committed suicide? Pyke didn’t know for certain that Cathy had, in fact, killed herself, but all the evidence pointed towards it; the slashed wrists, the blood-crusted knife. Jonah and Zephaniah had taken off for England. Maybe they had looked for her and hadn’t been able to find her; but then again perhaps they had found her and decided that she wasn’t worth burying. This was where she ought to rest, Pyke decided. When it was all over, he’d come back for her, give her the burial she deserved.
An owl hooted and then something rustled in nearby bushes. A disembodied voice said, ‘Detective-inspector Pyke?’
In the gloom, a figure came into view. Maggie Atkins took a couple of steps towards him. She was wearing a dirty white cotton dress and a woollen shawl but looked cold and bedraggled, her hair dangling over her face.
‘Cathy talked about you a lot. I saw you once — a month ago — at John’s cabin and then again last night, same place. That’s why I left the note.’
Her cheeks were pinched, her figure almost skeletal.
‘I’ve just come from the Castle.’ Pyke waited for a moment. ‘I found Cathy’s body there. I think she killed herself.’
Maggie Atkins gasped softly and then covered her mouth. ‘She… she blamed herself…’ Tears welled in her eyes.
‘Her wrists had been slit. I found her in an underground passageway at the back of the building.’
William’s former nanny tried to fight back the tears. ‘I tried to talk to her, reason with her…’
‘Why did she blame herself for William’s death?’
There was a wild look in her eyes. ‘You don’t know? Cathy always thought you’d find out.’
‘Find out what?’ Pyke’s mind was racing, trying to make the connection.
‘There was no kidnapping — at least not a genuine one. It was staged to appear genuine, for the benefit of the driver and ultimately Jonah Hancock.’ Maggie’s head was bowed and her tone was disconsolate.
Pyke’s mind drifted back to the first words Cathy had said to him. You shouldn’t have come. She hadn’t asked for him, hadn’t wanted him there. Cathy — and others, including Maggie — had set the whole thing up with the intention, no doubt, of extorting twenty thousand pounds from her husband. And then what? For a moment Pyke wondered at the recklessness and naivety of the scheme. There was no way men like the Hancocks would have allowed such a thing to take place without exacting retribution. His mind turned to her body. Perhaps this was what had happened.
‘Tell me about it, Maggie.’
She nodded once. ‘I suppose Cathy had had enough of her husband’s boorish ways, his infidelities, her father-in-law’s interference. She knew he’d never consent to a divorce, at least not one that allowed her to keep William. And she couldn’t afford to leave just like that. In any case, she’d put up with the Hancocks for five years, and she believed she deserved something for her efforts.’
Pyke thought about Cathy’s unhappiness and what it must have taken to drive her to do such a thing. ‘And you and John Johns agreed to help?’
Maggie stared at him and then nodded. ‘I saw at first hand how terrible her husband and her father-in-law could be.’
‘And Johns? Was he her lover?’
Maggie blushed a little, perhaps taken aback by the bluntness of his question. ‘Some of the time. I think he liked her more than she liked him. But he had his own reasons for wanting to get back at the Hancocks.’
It made sense now, Johns’ occasional diffidence towards him; he would have seen Pyke as a rival for Cathy’s affection. Perhaps Johns had been spying on them the night he and Cathy had embraced in the garden.
‘So they concocted this plan? Execute the kidnapping and then send a ransom note to the Castle from Scottish Cattle.’ Pyke waited and said, ‘You wrote the first letter — and the last one.’
Maggie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She was shivering from the cold. ‘That was John’s idea, Scottish Cattle. He did it to confuse the Hancocks; no one’s heard from the Bull in years.’