Pyke assured Tilling that he would think about what he’d said.
That afternoon, Pyke collected Felix from Godfrey’s shop and took him back to the house, where they rescued Copper from the back yard. They walked to the fields just to the north of their street. It was a warm, late summer day and, away from the maw of the city, the air smelled clean and refreshing. The sky was an unbroken panoply of blue, and the ground underfoot had been baked hard by the sun. Copper limped contentedly by their side and, as they walked, Felix discussed the good and bad points of the new nanny, mostly in terms of how she was and wasn’t like Jo.
The field to their right had been portioned up into allotments and Pyke had taken one of the plots and had started to plant his own vegetables. He liked the idea of working a small patch of land and showing Felix how particular foods arrived on his plate. There was a small shed in one corner of the allotment from which Pyke collected a shovel before digging down into recently cultivated earth. Felix and Copper looked on without much interest. Eventually, the end of the shovel struck the top of the trunk. Pyke cleared a space around it and invited Felix to join him in the hole.
‘I want you to see something,’ Pyke said, putting his arm around Felix’s shoulder. ‘I was hoping you could open up the trunk for me.’
‘Why? What’s inside?’
‘Why don’t you open it and see for yourself.’ Pyke stood back while Felix unfastened the catch and lifted up the lid.
The eighteen gold bars were just as he’d left them. The reflection from the sun made it hard to look at them for any length of time.
For days, Pyke had agonised over whether to tell Felix about the bars or show them to him. The risk of doing so was great: Felix might turn against him or, worse still, denounce him as a common criminal. That said, considering the way Felix had dealt with Eric, the pickpocket, Pyke had seen something in his son, an indifference to the finer points of the law, and it was something he liked. That suggested to him it might be time to trust the lad a little more, show him something of the world Pyke actually inhabited. Let him be proud of his father; proud of his rougher edges and daring, rather than of his willingness to serve the very letter of the law.
Felix didn’t know what to do. ‘Are they real?’ he asked, afraid to reach out and touch them.
‘Try lifting one up. You’ll need both hands.’
Felix did as Pyke suggested and tottered unconvincingly under the weight of one of the bars before letting it drop back on to the pile. ‘Where have they come from?’ he asked eventually, still adjusting to the wonder of it all.
‘That doesn’t matter. What matters is they’re ours. Yours and mine. This is our secret. I want you to shake my hand; then we’ll both swear we’ll never tell another living soul about it.’
They shook hands and made the pledge. Pyke lifted one of the bars out of the trunk and put it in a satchel he’d brought with him. The market price was something in the region of eight hundred pounds; Ned Villums had offered to pay him half that. But it would be more than enough to settle his debts and pay his bills for the foreseeable future.
‘What are we going to do with them all?’
Pyke smiled at the speed with which his son had accepted his ownership of the bars. ‘Keep them here. From time to time I might sell one. But this is our future. I promised I’d try harder. This is the start of it.’
‘But what if someone else comes and digs them up?’
‘No one else knows about them. As long as we don’t tell anyone else, they’ll be more than safe right here.’
Later, as they walked back towards the house, the sun was setting in the west and the entire sky was washed with streaks of orange and gold. Copper trotted ahead on his three good legs and Felix walked next to Pyke holding his hand.
It took Pyke another month after he had seen Mary on to the steamer at Southampton to summon the necessary fortitude to face Silas Malvern in his own home. He was ushered in by the same butler into the same greenhouse he had visited three or four months earlier. This time, though, Malvern almost seemed pleased to see him and even made the butler fetch two glasses of his best cognac. He also ordered the man to bring a chair for Pyke and put it close by so that they could talk without being interrupted. He seemed to be in good spirits and, if anything, his health had improved slightly since Pyke had last seen him outside the Sessions House.
‘Now, sir, to what do I owe the dubious honour of this visit?’ he asked, once the butler had returned with the chair and the brandies.
‘You once expressed a desire to be reunited with your brother, Phillip. I’m sorry to tell you he’s dead.’
Malvern’s expression crumpled and his top lip began to quiver. ‘I see.’ He tried to regain control of his mouth. ‘Can I ask where and how he died…’ Closing his eyes, he went on, ‘and what has become of his body? I should like to honour him in death in a manner I wasn’t able to in life.’
‘He fell in with the wrong people. It’s likely his body will never be found.’
‘Will you at least tell me about the circumstances of his death and the identity of these people you refer to?’
‘On certain conditions.’
Malvern licked his lips. ‘Such as?’
‘I want you to own up to what you did. An innocent man was sacrificed to preserve your family’s good name.’
Malvern paused and then nodded his head slowly, as though acknowledging the truth of what Pyke had just said. With a lazy movement he waved his hand, as though swatting an imaginary fly. ‘What would be the purpose of raking over old ground?’
The almost casual manner with which Malvern had admitted to his part in the plot to fabricate the evidence against Morel-Roux took Pyke’s breath away.
‘You’ve clung on to your honour and fortune and Pierce has been promoted to the rank of superintendent. But a good man is dead for no other reason than he was poor and foreign and therefore expendable. Is that something you want to take to your grave?’
‘If I ever felt the need to confess my sins, I’d do so in the presence of a priest, not a common thief.’
‘I’m not talking about making a statement before the Church or even the law. I know you’d never do it. I just want you to admit what you did to me.’
‘Why?’ This time Malvern seemed genuinely curious. ‘You already seem to have made up your mind anyway.’
‘Because I want to hear the words come from your lips.’
The idea of exacting his own justice had crossed Pyke’s mind, but such an act would only play into the hands of the Jamaican conspirators. He wondered what he had really hoped to achieve by confronting the old man.
When Malvern didn’t answer, Pyke added, ‘I realise that some vague information about a brother you haven’t seen in more than twenty years is perhaps insufficient inducement here, so I’m prepared to sweeten my offer.’
‘Sweeten in what sense?’
‘I also have some information about your daughter.’
That made him sit up straighter. ‘What do you mean? What information do you have about my Elizabeth?’
Pyke pretended not to have heard him. ‘But you see, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll tell you what I know only if you’ll agree to make a confession in front of Sir Richard Mayne and Fitzroy Tilling.’
He sat back and watched the old man’s bewilderment, enjoying it until he considered his own motivations for doing what he was about to do. Until now it hadn’t been clear to him, but suddenly it was: he wanted to ruin Pierce and break Malvern. Any hint of wrongdoing on Pierce’s part would bring about his dismissal and the truth about Elizabeth Malvern would surely send the old man to his grave. What Pyke was doing had nothing to do with justice, with avenging the Swiss valet’s death.
‘I’ve just received a letter from my daughter.’ Malvern stared at him with ill-concealed hostility. ‘It would appear she’s decided to remain in Jamaica for the time being and she’s quite adamant that I’m not to sanction the sale of Ginger Hill.’ Pyke couldn’t tell whether he welcomed this move or not.