The first gin barely touched his throat, the clean aroma of the drink filling his nostrils. The second went down just as quickly. By the fifth he couldn’t feel his face, and it was only when he’d lost count of the gins he’d drunk that he remembered his promise to Jo. Outside on the street, he watched as a hackney carriage rattled past him; he made no effort to flag it down. She would be waiting for him, wondering where he’d got to. The feeling was a disconcerting one. From the tavern he’d been drinking in, he stumbled across St Paul’s Yard, in the shadow of the great cathedral, to the top of Ludgate Hill, where he found a young woman with dark hair and big hips. Thrusting a five-shilling coin into her palm, Pyke led her into an alleyway that was so dark he couldn’t even see the colour of her eyes. Wordlessly he unhooked his braces and let his trousers drop to his ankles. She had pulled up her layers of petticoats and as she guided him with her hand, he mumbled in her ear, ‘Can I call you Mary?’
That drew a throaty laugh. ‘You paid your money, you call me anything you like.’
Later, when it was finished and Pyke was pulling up his braces, she touched him on the face and asked why he’d been crying. He had already paid her and her expression was merely curious. Pyke stared at her, not even aware that he’d been upset.
‘You asked if you could call me Mary.’ She was peering at him through the gloom. Pyke nodded vaguely. ‘So why did you keep saying you were sorry over and over to a woman called Emily?’
As the shame scalded Pyke’s cheeks, he turned around and retraced his steps back to the street.
In the morning Pyke bought a baked potato and a mug of sludgy black coffee from a street vendor near the market and ate the potato sitting on the pavement. He could still taste the gin in his mouth and even the thick coffee did little to take the taste away.
The market was thronging, and the noise and stink — of animal dung and meat left too long in the sun — was sufficient to make him retch. Producing nothing but bile, Pyke wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt and waited for the feeling to pass. Ahead of him in the field, long-horned Spanish cattle were being herded into drove-rings, each linked by wooden tracks, by drovers and their dogs. The cacophony of barking, grunting and lowing was almost too much for him to bear. Even worse was the plague of black flies which hovered and buzzed around the animals. The ground had dried in the sun but this, in turn, had produced its own problems. As the cattle moved across the field, they kicked up clouds of earth and dust into the air so that it was difficult to see more than a few yards in any direction.
He had slept in his own bed — he had been too inebriated to consider going anywhere else — and was surprised, given what he’d done the previous night, that no police officers had roused him during the early hours and dragged him off to answer Alefounder’s charges. Nor were there any officers waiting for him when he returned to his garret after breakfast.
With Copper, Pyke spent the rest of the morning traipsing along the Ratcliff Highway, still looking for Arthur Sobers. He moved cautiously through the dense warren of narrow, windy lanes, always looking behind him for footpads and stopping only to ask people about Sobers — and the missing mudlark — when he was sure that all those in the immediate vicinity had heard Copper growl and seen the size of his jaws. Underfoot, and in spite of the hot weather, the ground was spongy and damp. On either side of the street, in the broken windows of buckling, timber-framed houses, white eyes and smudged faces stared back at him as he walked past. At one corner, he passed a man openly defecating in the street; at another, twin boys barely older than Felix, their limbs bowed from rickets, held out their hands for money.
Aware that he’d made no progress in his hunt for Sobers or the blind man known only as Filthy, Pyke left Copper back in the vicinity of Smithfield and, still curious as to why he’d received no visit from the police regarding his treatment of Alefounder, quietly asked after the trader both at his place of work and the apartment Harriet Alefounder had told him about on The Strand. At the former, he was told Alefounder had not come into work that morning. At the latter, there was no answer. With nothing else to do, and no further clues to chase, Pyke hailed a carriage and told the driver to take him all the way down to Richmond.
‘You’ve just missed him,’ Harriet Alefounder said, red eyed and slurring her words slightly, even though it was still the afternoon.
Pyke looked around the well-furnished drawing room. ‘So he was here?’
She gave him a peculiar stare. ‘Oh yes. He was here.’
‘I need to speak to him.’
‘That might be difficult, I’m afraid.’ She gave a hollow laugh.
‘Why? As I told you before, I suspect he might be involved in the murder of a young mulatto woman.’
What sounded like a snort emerged from her mouth. ‘In that case he’s slipped through your fingers, sir.’ Pyke couldn’t work out whether she was pleased or upset by this notion.
‘Do you know where he’s gone?’
‘He came here from some dinner he’d attended, packed a suitcase with some of his old clothes, and left in a carriage bound for the West India Docks.’
‘He’s going to Jamaica?’ The skin tightened around his temples.
‘Yes,’ she said, irritated. ‘Where else would he go?’
Pyke contemplated this for a moment, trying to adjust to the shock. ‘You know Elizabeth Malvern has recently sailed for Jamaica too.’
From Harriet Alefounder’s expression, Pyke could tell she hadn’t known, and upon hearing this she fell on to the sofa and began to sob.
He watched her, not knowing what to do, whether to try to comfort her or just leave. ‘I am sorry…’
Still sobbing, she looked up at him and spat, ‘Get out of my sight.’
‘Do you know which ship he’s due to sail on?’
Her eyes glowed like lumps of hot coal. ‘The way he was talking last night, the ship was due to leave first thing this morning.’
‘The Island Queen?’
‘Yes, that was the name he mentioned, I think.’
Harold Field’s home occupied four storeys of a Georgian town house at the northern end of Harley Street, and when Pyke presented himself at the front door, the following day, he was escorted up to a room on the third floor and told to wait for Field there. It was a far more refined home than Pyke had expected and, to pass the time, he studied Field’s book collection, whose treasures included all twelve volumes of Plato’s Republic and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. In fact, with its sofas, thick striped wallpaper, high ceilings, gilt mirrors and large bay window overlooking the street, the room could have belonged to any well-to-do English gentleman.
‘To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’ Field was immaculately dressed as usual, in a knee-length, dark blue frock-coat, a fawn waistcoat and matching trousers, and a white satin cravat tied loosely around his neck.
‘I thought I’d let you know that I intend to travel to Jamaica. A suspect in the murder investigation I was telling you about has absconded there, perhaps to join his mistress.’
Earlier that morning, Pyke had found out from the Admiralty that a steamer was due to depart from Southampton for Kingston at the end of the week.
‘And what? This is simply a courtesy call to inform me of your decision?’
‘I went back to see Crane. He assured me that he’d let Bessie Daniels go home.’
Field assimilated this piece of information. ‘She hasn’t been in contact with me.’