Bloody Winter

Book 0: Pyke Mystery

by Andrew Pepper

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Fall & winter reads

Synopsis

The troubled head of the Detective Branch returns, in an intriguing case of kidnap, rebellion and murder... The body of a vagrant is discovered in a ditch in County Tipperary. Knox, a young Irish policeman with divided loyalties is told that the landowner wants the case dealt with swiftly and quietly. However, when Knox examines the corpse, he realises that this supposed vagrant was wearing a Savile Row suit . . . Three months earlier, Detective Inspector Pyke was investigating a kidnapping in Wales. The crime seems to be linked to a group of rebels, but Pyke soon suspects the case is not as clear cut as it seems. What are the links between the rebellion in Wales and the unrest in Ireland - and has Pyke finally bitten off more than he can chew?

Release date: April 14, 2011

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Print pages: 271

Sample

Snowflakes the size of half-shilling coins fell from inky skies, a few inches settling on frozen ground, the dirt and mud hidden
beneath a dazzling layer of white. It made the town seem almost pleasant, lending it a magical quality it most definitely
didn’t deserve. The snow, which would be gone by the morning, a lie upon a lie. Welcome to Merthyr. Welcome back to Merthyr. Welcome to the dirtiest town in the kingdom.


Pyke passed through the army checkpoint without arousing the suspicion of the bored soldiers, two rosy-cheeked men who made
Pyke think of his son Felix. Pushing this thought to the back of his mind, he kept his eyes focused on the snow. If the men
had been instructed to look for him, he decided, they seemed to have forgotten. Their rifles were slung lazily over their
shoulders and they were more interested in a young woman on the other side of the street.


He had just crossed Jackson’s Bridge over the River Taff and continued now along Jackson Street towards the centre of the
town. The icy weather had driven people indoors, leaving the streets nearly deserted. Perhaps, Pyke mused, the troops had
also played their part. As he walked, he ruminated on the irony of it all. This was a situation he had conspired to bring
about and yet, now it had come to pass, he did not welcome it with any enthusiasm.


With the snow and the eerie quiet, it felt like the end of the world; or perhaps just the end of his world. The shops in the town centre were still boarded up and the old courthouse was guarded by two soldiers. They stood
on the steps, stamping their feet and blowing into their hands. Pyke checked the windows for any sign of light but he saw nothing. As he stood there, he tried to take in the full horror of what had happened inside. The building seemed deserted,
a fact confirmed by one of the soldiers when Pyke asked to see Sir Clancy Smyth.


Did either of them know where the magistrate was?

The soldiers looked at each other and shrugged.

Mostly to get out of the cold, Pyke headed for the nearest pub, the Falcon on High Street. At the counter in the taproom,
he pointed at a cask of ale rather than opening his mouth to order – doing so would draw attention to his Englishness. But
no one paid him any attention, and inevitably what little conversation there was turned to recent events. The two men nearest
to him were speaking in English. Pyke heard everything he needed to know within a few minutes.


Benjamin Griffiths was dead.

John Wylde had been arrested for his murder and was languishing in the station-house.

The two ironmasters were trying in vain to shore up their operations. Josiah Webb’s Morlais works had temporarily been closed
down and most of his family had departed for London. Jonah and Zephaniah Hancock, owners of the Caedraw ironworks, had retreated
to their family pile in Hampshire.


The part of town known as China was under curfew and martial law, as were parts of Dowlais and Pennydarren and the areas bordering
Caedraw’s ironworks. Scores of Irishmen, some Welshmen and a handful of policemen and soldiers had been injured or killed
in the disturbances. Yynsgall chapel in Dowlais and a Welsh Wesleyan chapel on High Street had been burned to the ground,
while much of Quarry Row lay in ruins.


None of this was unexpected.

Pyke had travelled for a day without stopping and he felt exhausted – tired down to his very bones. After one mug of ale he
felt light-headed; he decided not to have another, even though the fire spitting in the grate had been the first welcome sight
of the day. Lacing up his boots, Pyke stood up and pulled his greatcoat around his aching body. The wound where he’d been
shot hurt each time he moved too quickly.


Ignoring the bruises on his feet and the icy wind, Pyke retraced his steps as far as Jackson’s Bridge. He passed through the
same checkpoint and scrambled down the bank of the river to the path that ran along the edge of the canal. Snow was falling but
it had eased enough for him to see the glow of the nearest cinder tip. Everything was quiet except for the clanking of chains
at Caedraw. Short of a strike, nothing, not a snowstorm nor a drought, would bring the works to a standstill. Jonah Hancock’s words.


Pyke walked in a southerly direction for the best part of an hour. He knew what was keeping him going but it remained something
he wouldn’t – couldn’t – think about. Instead he focused on the next step and the one after that, his breath condensing on his woollen muffler then
freezing. Eventually he came upon the house. Its name – Blenheim – a testament to the bloated ambition of its owner. It was
just as he remembered it: not stately but smaller and more run down than it initially appeared. Approaching the house from
the line of trees to the north, Pyke took care not to draw attention to himself, the snow muffling his footsteps as he made
his way along the gravel path. Candlelight burned in what Pyke recalled was the window of the study. It told him that Smyth
was at home.


At the front door, he paused for a few moments, readying himself, the tension in his stomach helping to restore the circulation
to his feet. Then without warning, he lifted up his right boot and kicked the door open, the wooden frame splintering under
the impact. Pyke crossed the threshold, the pistol already in his hand.


Alerted by the noise, the occupant of the study shuffled out to confront him, but it was the butler rather than the magistrate
himself, a frail old man with arms like twigs. He saw Pyke’s expression and the gleaming metal in his hand and froze.


Even though the first words that tumbled from his pale lips were ‘He’s not here’, Pyke couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow himself to
believe it. He had come too far and been subjected to too much.


Raising the pistol, Pyke pressed the end of the barrel against the man’s terrified face and, just for a second, the rush of
anger within him was so intense, so unexpected, that he almost squeezed the trigger. Instead, he asked where Smyth was, and
when the butler didn’t answer immediately, Pyke prised apart the man’s gums and pushed the barrel so deep into his mouth that
the servant began to retch.


Disgusted, Pyke withdrew the pistol. Whatever had billowed up inside him suddenly ebbed away like the parting of the tide.


‘Where is he?’

The butler gave him a glassy stare. ‘Ireland.’

Pyke nodded. Smyth had once talked about his ancestral home there. ‘Tipperary?’

The old man’s stare drifted over Pyke’s shoulder. ‘That would be my guess.’

‘When did he leave?’

‘Been gone two or three weeks now.’

‘And did he say when he’d be back?’

‘He didn’t even tell me he was going.’ The butler shrugged. ‘If I had to guess, I wouldn’t say any time soon.’

Later, as he watched the house from the same line of trees he’d hidden in earlier, Pyke thought about how he’d humiliated
a defenceless old man who’d done nothing more than obey his master’s wishes. He watched for an hour to make sure that Smyth
wasn’t there, but no one apart from the butler appeared in any of the windows. Eventually the old man closed the curtains
and there was nothing left for Pyke to do. It would take him another hour to walk back to Merthyr and as Pyke set off, the
wind howling shrilly in his ears, he kept coming back to the same thought.


Nothing at all good had come of his time in Merthyr. And nothing good was likely to come of it, either.

Michael Knox trudged across the spongy ground a few paces behind the agent. It was the first time he had met the new man and
his immediate impressions weren’t at all good. Knox had expected arrogance, of course, but given that the man’s predecessor
had been shot and killed, he had expected the agent to betray at least some doubt and perhaps even a little humility. Yet
Jonathan Maxwell treated Knox like one of his labourers, barking orders and expecting them to be followed. He had even berated
Knox for his time-keeping.


‘Down here,’ Maxwell grunted. He turned off the flint track and clambered down the bank towards the murky water of the stream.
Dead leaves crunched underfoot and a solitary blackbird called from the branch of a tree. ‘Nothing’s been touched,’ he added.


Knox had seen plenty of corpses, more in the last few weeks than he could count, but he had never led a murder inquiry. Already
he felt the weight of responsibility. They walked around the body a few times, staring down at the stab wound in the middle
of the dead man’s stomach. Reading Knox’s mind, Maxwell said, ‘We looked for the knife but couldn’t find it.’


‘His Lordship has specifically requested that you look into this matter.’


Sub-inspector Hastings had gone to Knox’s cottage to deliver the order in person. No other explanation had been forthcoming.

‘This is not a good thing,’ his wife, Martha, had said, as soon as the sub-inspector left. Knox was inclined to agree.


The corpse seemed untouched. It was a small miracle that a fox or rats hadn’t feasted on the dead flesh. From the tree, the
blackbird watched them in silence. Knox took a closer look at the body, watching his breath condense in the cold air. ‘Do you know who he is?’ he asked eventually.


Maxwell shook his head. ‘A couple of the boys said he wasn’t from around here.’ He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
‘I’d say he was a vagrant, a poacher looking to steal from his Lordship’s table.’


Just before Christmas, an unknown assassin had followed Maxwell’s predecessor home and shot him in the face. During the spring
and summer, acting on behalf of Lord Cornwallis, the man had overseen the eviction of more than a hundred families from their
land.


Knox crouched down next to the dead man, trying not to get his knees wet. The deceased’s lips were blue and swollen and his
eyes were glassy. Knox put the man’s age at forty or thereabouts. He had thick, dark hair and Knox guessed he had been quite
handsome. The man was fully clothed, apart from his frock-coat, which lay tangled in the bushes near by. Knox riffled through
the pockets. The fancy label inside the frock-coat indicated it had been made by a tailor in London.


‘Who found him?’

Already bored, Maxwell was inspecting his pocket watch. ‘One of the labourers.’

‘I’ll need to speak to him.’ Knox hadn’t found any money or possessions in the dead man’s pockets – perhaps someone had stolen
them.


Maxwell grimaced. Clearly he didn’t like taking orders from a man of Knox’s rank. ‘Lord Cornwallis wants a word first.’

‘With me dressed like this?’ Knox gestured at his dirty coat and muddy boots.

‘His Lordship was insistent.’

Knox cast his eyes down towards the body. ‘I’ll need someone to help me. I left my cart at the lodge.’

‘You go and see his Lordship, I’ll make sure someone brings the cart and body over to the house.’

‘Tell his Lordship I’ll be with him shortly.’ Knox rubbed his sore eyes and tried to compose his thoughts. ‘I should have
a look around, see if anything has been left behind.’


Maxwell glanced at the darkening sky. ‘Don’t be too long. His Lordship doesn’t like to be kept waiting. He wants you to go straight to the drawing room.’


Knox found nothing of interest on or near the corpse. It stood to reason that the man had been murdered there, by the stream,
but the blood had long since drained into the earth. The body hadn’t started to rot but then it had been cold, especially
at night and Knox didn’t think the corpse had been there for more than a day. Once he had clambered up the bank, Knox lingered
for a moment, watching the slow-moving water and wondering whether he had missed something important. Then he turned and started
the short walk back to the main house.


Dundrum House was a four-floor Palladian mansion built from locally quarried stone, seven bay windows long. Knox found the
place more intimidating than beautiful, its scale too grand for its surroundings, too removed from the world of the nearby
village, as though to underline that its owner belonged to a higher class of men and could do as he liked.


Knox had visited his mother many times using the ‘poor door’ but he had never used the front entrance. His mother had worked
in the kitchens for as long as he could remember and he knew the labyrinthine passages of the cellar far better than he knew
the main house. He ascended the steps one by one and paused in the entrance hall. On the walls, Cornwallis’s ancestors seemed
to glower at him. The Moores had forcibly acquired the estate in the aftermath of Cromwell’s rampage across Ireland two hundred
years earlier. Since then the family had earned a reputation for muscular Protestantism and the current inheritor of the family
title, Asenath Moore, the third Viscount Cornwallis, was cut from the same cloth.


When he entered the drawing room, Knox found Cornwallis warming himself by the open fire. A small, wizened man with a bald
head shaped like an acorn, Cornwallis wore tan knee-breeches and a black cutaway coat. Greeting Knox with a curt nod, he sat
down in an armchair next to the fire and regarded Knox without speaking, as if inspecting a museum exhibit in a vaguely dissatisfied
manner.


‘Your mother has kept me informed of your progress. It has been, I’m told, quite satisfactory.’ He removed his handkerchief and wiped particles of food from the corners of his mouth.


Knox bowed his head. ‘Thank you, your Lordship.’

This show of deference seemed to please the older man. ‘Maxwell tells me he’s shown you the body down by Woodcock Grove.’

Knox knew better than to talk when a question hadn’t been asked.

‘I have no idea who this man was or what business he had on my estate. I think we can safely assume him to be a poacher and
a vagrant.’


A vagrant, Knox thought, whose clothes had been made by a Savile Row tailor.

‘I don’t want word of this unfortunate occurrence spreading around the estate. For this reason, I took the decision not to solicit the assistance of the two sub-constables here in Dundrum. They’re good men, both of them, but they’re liable to
blab.’


‘I understand, your Lordship, but there will have to be an inquest …’

‘That has been taken care of,’ the old man said.

‘Very good, your Lordship.’ Knox tried to swallow. Unlike his own calloused hands, Cornwallis’s were as smooth as marble.
‘But it can sometimes be hard to keep such matters from the local people. The man who found the body, for example, will want
to brag about it …’


‘He’ll be warned, you can be assured of that,’ Cornwallis said, interrupting. ‘No, sir, if word of this abhorrence reaches
the ears of the village it won’t have come from anyone on this estate.’


Knox took a short while to assimilate the threat. He was starting to see why Cornwallis had asked for him. ‘You want the matter
handled quietly.’


The old man’s face brightened. ‘Quietly. That’s exactly it. I couldn’t have put it better myself.’


Cornwallis most definitely hadn’t been quiet about the murder of his former agent. He had travelled to Clonmel to harangue
the county inspector in person and had warned that troop reinforcements would have to be forthcoming.


Cornwallis stood up and wandered across to the window. ‘I want you to take the body away. I don’t want to see or hear of it
again.’


It was said as though the matter was a trifling one. Knox could have pointed out that such an order was tantamount to interfering in a police investigation but it would have been futile
to do so. Cornwallis’s influence was such that there was no gap between his ambition and official policy.


‘You will have heard some things – some unfair things – said about me in Cashel, I expect. That I am a monster; that I do
not care about the well-being of the local people.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I’m here, am I not, even though my sons have chosen to spend the winter in London. I’m simply trying to attend to the matters
of my estate as best I can.’ Cornwallis tapped the heels of his boots against the floor.


An awkward silence ensued. Knox wondered why the old man had felt the need to justify himself.

‘Will that be all, your Lordship?’

‘Asenath. Call me Asenath.’ He wandered across to where Knox was standing. ‘You’re a good boy.’ Stretching out his hand, he
tapped Knox gently on the cheek.


Knox shifted his weight from foot to foot and waited to be dismissed.

‘Your mother has been a good and faithful servant to this family.’ Cornwallis waved his hand, as though flicking away a fly.
‘She’s asked to see you. You’ll find her in the kitchens.’


His mother took him in her arms, even though her hands were covered in stuffing. Knox was known by most of the women who worked
there and they shouted their greetings. Pulling back from her hug, Knox surveyed his mother with affection. She was tall and
elegant. Her thin, straw-coloured hair was tied up under a lace bonnet and her skin was blotchy from the heat of the kitchen.
He still thought her a fine-looking woman, for her age, but each time he saw her, he worried that she seemed older. This time
she also seemed thinner, but he reassured himself with the thought that there wasn’t likely to be a shortage of food in Cornwallis’s
kitchen.


‘How are you, son?’ She wiped her hands on her apron and touched him on the cheek. ‘And James?’

James was his son, her grandson. He noticed she hadn’t asked after his wife. ‘They’re fine. Martha’s fine, too.’

‘It’s the wee’un I worry about.’

Knox looked at the goose lying in front of her and the vegetables waiting to be cut. ‘It’s sometimes hard to believe people
are dying of starvation.’


‘Quiet, boy. You don’t want his Lordship to hear you talkin’ like that, do you?’

‘You think what he’s done, what he’s doing, is right? Turning families out of their homes?’

His mother looked at him, half-amused. This was familiar ground and usually they chose to respect each other’s different opinions
of the aristocrat. ‘Is it his fault the crops failed again this year?’


This time, Knox felt, there was a prickliness to her tone and he wondered whether he should speak his mind or not.

His mother sighed. ‘I’ve served him for almost forty years and I swear, he’s not a bad man. And he’s been good to us, all
of us, your brothers, your father, you too.’


Knox felt a pang of guilt. He hadn’t seen his youngest brother, Peter, for a number of months and it struck him that with
the spread of disease brought on by the famine he was more at risk than most. Peter had always been a sickly child but a bout
of the pox when he was eight had nearly finished him off. Six or seven years on, his speech and mental faculties were still
those of a young boy. As a result Peter had never been able to work and the family did what they could to protect him from
the hardships of the world. Even their father did his bit, but it was Knox’s mother who bore the brunt of the care.


‘How is Peter?’

‘You’d know if you ever paid us a visit.’

Knox didn’t answer. He wondered whether his mother knew the real reason he kept away from the family cabin and why he hadn’t
made more of an effort to get to know his two much younger brothers.


As if reading his mind, his mother said, ‘Your father’s back has been playing up.’

Knox shuffled from foot to foot and looked around the kitchen. He didn’t want to talk about his father. ‘I should get going.
I have to ride back to Cashel and it’ll be dark in a couple of hours.’


His mother smiled and nodded. ‘You take good care of yourself, son. These are terrible times.’ Her smile evaporated, lines deepening on her forehead.


Knox wondered whether she knew that a man had been killed only a few hundred yards from where they were standing. ‘Can I ask
you a question before I go?’


Sarah Knox tucked in a loose strand of hair that had escaped from her bonnet. ‘Of course.’

‘It’s about my position …’

As a rule, policemen weren’t meant to take up positions in their native counties or the counties they were attached to by
marriage. But eight years earlier, there had been a shortfall in numbers and a notice had been placed in the local newspaper.
Knox had applied and had been accepted. He’d always thought that he had been accepted for the position on his own merit.


‘When I first applied, did his Lordship put in a good word for me with Hastings?’

His mother retreated to the wooden table where the goose was waiting. ‘I honestly don’t know, son. I might’ve mentioned that
I didn’t want you to leave home. What mother wouldn’t do that?’


Knox went over to her and gently touched her face. ‘I’m not angry with you. But a few moments ago, you said we all owed his
Lordship something and I just wanted to know what you meant.’


His mother sighed. ‘I was referring to the wages he pays me, that’s all.’ Having made sure no one was looking, she picked
up a thick cut of cured meat and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘Don’t say a word,’ she whispered. ‘Just take it, for you, Martha
and the infant.’


Knox wanted to give it back but one of the other kitchen-servants had just come into the room. If someone saw what his mother
had done and reported her, she could lose her job.


He went to kiss her on the cheek and, as he did so, she grabbed his wrist. ‘You’re a good boy, Michael,’ she whispered, ‘always
was, and I love you very much, but this time you need to think about the whole family.’


The first potato crop had failed the previous autumn. On that occasion, the local authorities – in consort with the government
in London – had made relief provisions and only a few people had perished. But when the crop had failed a second time one
year later, the new Whig administration decided to leave the relief efforts to the traders, supposing they would import the necessary
food. When the scale of the crisis became apparent, the traders tried to purchase additional maize and corn from Europe and
the United States but prices had soared throughout the autumn and the first part of the winter. Now most ordinary people couldn’t
afford to eat and there was little that impecunious local boards could do.


Earlier in the year, Knox and other policemen had helped to protect convoys of wheat departing for Waterford and eventually
England, where the grain would earn the greatest price. As far as he knew, the grain had reached its final destination, but
in light of the current shortages, the decision to export so much food seemed immoral if not downright wicked.


He thought about the food he’d just seen in Cornwallis’s kitchen and trembled at the injustice. Knox liked to think of himself
as honest and plain speaking, but given the opportunity to confront the aristocrat, he had said and done nothing. He tried
not think about how this reflected on his character.


The sky in the west was flushed with pale streaks of light and the air felt cool and damp on his skin. Knox kept up a gentle
pace, keen not to drive the horse too hard, since Maxwell wouldn’t have thought to feed or water it. Just before departing,
he had talked to the labourer who’d first discovered the body. The man had told him nothing new and had strenuously denied
taking anything from the dead man’s pockets. With nothing but the wind for company, Knox’s thoughts turned to the cured meat.
He hadn’t eaten in twelve hours and his stomach was swollen with hunger. Taking it from his pocket, he brought it up to his
nose and sniffed. Knox hadn’t seen, let alone eaten, meat for six months, and the urge to gnaw at it was almost too much to
bear. Just one mouthful, he told himself. But if he ate a mouthful, he would end up gobbling the whole thing, and then how
could he face his wife? Instead he returned the meat to his pocket, tried to distract himself by thinking about the body behind
him.


About halfway along the old road a pauper scampered out in front of him, waving his arms. Knox thought it was some kind of
ruse and that the man was part of a gang of robbers. He tugged the reins and went to retrieve his pistol. Quickly, though,
he could see that the man was in distress; he was talking rapidly in broken Irish. Knox told him to slow down and explain what had happened. The
man yanked Knox’s arm and led him through a gate to his cabin, where a lantern was hanging on a hook by the door. In halted
speech he said that he’d left for a week in order to find road-building work in Thurles. Pushing open the door, Knox could
smell the rotting corpses. There were three of them, limbs tangled up in the middle of the room, their carcasses gnawed almost
clean by rats. Knox stared at them, not knowing what to say. Next to him, the husband slumped to his knees and started weeping.
Knox sniffed the air and looked for a shovel. If the women and two children had died from a fever it was important to bury
them as quickly as possible, to halt the spread of disease.


He told the ma. . .