by Adrian Speed
Sir Reginald’s feet tapped on the stone steps like coins as he caught up with me in a brief jog. He joined me at the top step in front of the door and rapped on it. His hand came up to his head subconsciously to grasp the brim of the hat he wasn’t wearing. He tried to hide it by teasing a strand of hair.
“Yes sir?” The door opened a crack and a maid hauled on the door to open it a bit wider. It had to be three inches thick of solid oak.
“Salutations.” Sir Reginald bowed his head. “Please present my compliments to the lady of the house, my name is Sir Reginald Derby and it would be my sincere pleasure if she would receive us. This is my associate, Ms Hannah Delaronde.”
The maid welcomed us into the atrium of the building. Sir Reginald’s bombastic bluster scarcely gave her a choice. She curtsied and then disappeared upstairs. The atrium was large. Four metres deep and four metres high, with a staircase that led up to a balcony level above. A chandelier hung from the ceiling that would be the envy of any lord in the kingdom. Its beads of glass scattered candle light all across the room like an upper class disco ball.
“John lived above a shop,” I said. “How could Jacob afford all this?”
“John was never so foolish as to borrow against the value of his trading fleet simply to buy a house,” Sir Reginald said, inspecting a clock. It had ornate walnut inlay and I noticed as I glanced at the time, IIII instead of IV.
“He borrowed against the entire fleet just for this? That’s madness!”
“Madness, aye, but there’s method in it.” Sir Reginald turned away from the clock. “This age is more image conscious than even the twenty-first century. If a man steps into this house he can smell the wealth. He knows the man who owns a house like this is powerful and rich beyond compare. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Have you ever heard the advice, ‘wear your best suit when taking a loan’? Well this Jacob has done, on a much, much larger scale. People who met with John Arnold met a sailor and merchant, good with oranges and wine. People who meet Jacob Arnold are meeting a statesman.”
“Wearing the costume of a statesman maybe,” I said.
“We all wear a costume, my dear.” Sir Reginald tapped his cane against his head where his hat should be for emphasis. A door handle clicked and the maid returned.
“Mrs Arnold will entertain you in the red drawing room, Sir Reginald.” The maid bobbed her head. “Please follow me.”
The pair of us followed the maid into a room as large as Sir Reginald’s bedsit. It had a bookshelf on each wall, two settees of padded red velvet, and red silk lined the walls. At least I thought it was silk. Black thread picked out a pattern of flowers all along it up and down the walls in the French fashion.
Joan Arnold sat in a puddle of yellow silk on one of the settees. Ruffles and pleats and lace all came together in ridiculous excess. The neckline plunged low, lower than most people in the twenty-first century would dare to wear. There was no way she could move in it, I was sure. It would be like trying to move in a tent. But if we were all wearing a costume, then hers was a costume of luxury. A lady who did not have to move, the world would come to her.
Sir Reginald bowed his head to her as he entered, and that seemed to satisfy her, but she stared at me as if waiting for something. I didn’t move even as the lady’s expression grew darker. It was an uncomfortable few minutes before she spoke.
“You may be seated, please,” she indicated one of the other settees. “May I have the maid fetch you refreshment? We have coffee, jakolate, and even the Chinese tcha.”
“I’d love a cup of coffee,” Sir Reginald nodded. “With four spoonfuls of sugar.” I watched Joan’s eyes flair almost imperceptibly.
“Of course,” Joan smiled sweetly. “And you, girl?” she turned to me.
“Just a glass of...” I suddenly had an image of the river mud they might bring me if I asked for water. “Er... er... milk. A glass of milk.”
“Milk?” Joan’s eyes narrowed. She turned to her maid. “Mary, do we have a pail?”
“We had some brought for the blancmange this evening ma’am, and for your mother.”
“Then fetch up a glass,” Joan nodded. “I am sure a woman as delicate as Hannah Delaronde will settle for nothing less.” Perhaps, I thought, I should have just taken the river water.
Joan settled in her skirts as the maid left to fetch us drinks. She was not what I would have called an attractive woman. Her skin was pale, but it looked sickly more than it looked refined. Thick powder covered where blotches and freckles tried to upset the appearance of smooth white skin. Her hair was brown and coiled back into an ornate bun, but that only seemed to stretch her face around her eyes and give her a haughty expression. She had thick-lidded eyes, heavily painted. The face was plump, with loose, hanging fat on her neck. Yet her chin was sharp enough to serve as a bottle opener.
I felt cruel, thinking of her that way, but the efforts to transform her into a pale, doll-like lady had only made her hardy everyday features stand out more.
“Thank you for receiving us, Mrs Arnold,” Sir Reginald said.
“It is my absolute pleasure,” Joan smiled. “I have heard only the best about Sir Reginald of Derby.”
“I see my reputation precedes me,” Sir Reginald said with a false smile.
“Everyone knows if you have any murder with no murderer to be found to write to Sir Reginald of Derby for help,” Joan said. “And then pray to the good Lord that he will answer.”
“Then I am sure you can understand I need to ask you a few questions,” Sir Reginald said. “In a matter that is most serious and strictly confidential.”
“Alack, someone at court has been murdered then?”
“That is what I am trying to ascertain,” Sir Reginald reached into his jacket for his small notebook. “May I ask, during the fire–”
“Thank the Lord that preserved us!” Joan cut in.
“During the fire, may I ask where you were?”
“At Deptford, in the house of my late brother-in-law, John Arnold,” Joan said.
“Was there anyone else with you?”
“My sister-in-law, Mrs Elizabeth Arnold.” Interesting, I thought, when Jacob called her only Lizzie.
“Were your husbands with you?”
“No, John and Jacob had stayed in the city,” Joan answered. “John had sent Elizabeth and me to make ready the house. John had bought it only recently.”
“Sounds like work for a maid, rather than the lady of the house,” I said. Joan shot me another dark look.
“John Arnold was a terrible niggard. He kept only the one maid and was content to let his wife and me serve as little less than maids ourselves.”
As if to emphasise her point Mary the maid returned with another maid to serve the coffee. I was handed a china tankard of milk while Joan and Sir Reginald were carefully tended to with cup and saucer. Mary had brought up the entire sugarloaf and set to clipping it until Sir Reginald said stop. It took an embarrassingly long time before he was satisfied. The milk was warm and smelt most of the way to yogurt.
“Did you attempt to make contact with your husband during the fire?” Sir Reginald asked as he sipped his coffee flavoured syrup.
“How could I? No runners would brave those flames,” Joan shook her head. “Elizabeth and I went down to the church to pray and did not leave until Jacob returned to us.”
“And John?”
“The good Lord saw fit to spare him the hellfire of London,” Joan cast her eyes towards heaven. “But claimed him in a fever all the same.”
“At Deptford?” Sir Reginald asked.
“No, somewhere north of the river,” Joan said. “Jacob sat up with him all through the fever.”
“Do you know where?” I asked. I was beginning to get used to Joan’s dark looks and barely noticed the one she gave me this time.
“I did not pry,” Joan glowered. “A good wife knows her husband’s need. Perhaps one day he will want to talk. For the present he wishes only to for
get.”
“Do you know where John is buried?” Sir Reginald asked.
“No, only it was wherever he died. Jacob did not waste time, lest the humours of his body pollute the town.”
“How much stock was lost in the fire?”
“Jacob has never said.” Joan inclined her head. “The warehouse was in the New Wharf near the tower. I do not think it took to flame. Whatever stock was in the house was lost. John and Jacob had got the plate and gold out very quickly.”
“Do you have any children?” Sir Reginald changed tack so suddenly it made Joan shake almost as if she had been struck a blow.
“Not... presently...” she said.
“I have heard people say John was the nicest merchant in London,” Sir Reginald said. “Would you agree?”
“I am sure that is how he appeared, he worked hard to maintain the appearance,” Joan muttered. “Oh he was a fine and godly man. He was tender and forthright and thrifty and kind. But he and Jacob...” Joan sighed. “It got all the worse when Jacob and I married. After that he soured to the Lord Chancellor, my second cousin. Should you ever have wished to see the cruelty in John Arnold you need only mention the kindness of Edward Hyde.”
“Thank you Mrs Arnold.” Sir Reginald drained his mug of coffee. “I think perhaps we should take our leave now.” He stood up.
“You... you’ve only asked about John and my Jacob.” Joan jumped to her feet as well, despite the ridiculous dress. “You can’t think– you mustn’t think– no, it’s her isn’t it?” She cast a plump finger at me. “Her brother was with them at the fire. Just ask Jacob. She’d do anything to protect her brother Andrew. Jacob will tell you, it’s all the fault of Andrew Delaronde.”
“I disagree entirely,” Sir Reginald stood between the two of us. “And you do not need to fear accusations against Jacob. I already have it on the highest authority he had nothing to do with his brother’s death.”
“Whose authority?”
“Hannah Delaronde’s,” Sir Reginald said and rested a hand on Joan’s shoulder. The woman sagged back into her chair with a rustle. “Come, Hannah, we must return to Covent Garden.” Sir Reginald swept from the room with me in his wake, not even waiting for the servants to escort us out. “I believe it’s time we met Lord Clarendon.”
Chapter XIX
“No,” Sir Reginald said.
“But it’s perfect!” I said. “John invited me to it anyway.”
“No,” Sir Reginald insisted.
“The King and Lord Clarendon will–”
“Have more important matters of state to attend to than meeting you and John,” Sir Reginald snapped. “Their return to the City will see them plagued with sycophants. Do you want Andrew Delaronde to be known as just another coxcomb popinjay? Even John Arnold has only the flimsiest of pretences to present himself to the Lord Chancellor.”
It was the second of February 1666. King Charles, Edward Hyde and the entirety of court were set to return to Westminster today, the worst of the plague agreed to have passed. The procession of the king to Whitehall was set to be the greatest celebration of the winter after the subdued plague-weary Christmas.
“But if we do think Lord Clarendon had John killed...”
“Then we do not want to tip our hand by investigating the Lord Chancellor before we know.” Sir Reginald stamped his cane against the floor. “What if you are the only reason Lord Clarendon has John killed, hmm? Or worse, what if your investigation stops Lord Clarendon having John killed, eh? Think, my dear corn rose, about the paradox you’d cause.”
“We’ve dealt in paradox before...”
“But we’ve never risked upsetting the very reason we’re here.” He jabbed at me in the stomach with his cane point. “That skeleton found in the twenty-first century has to get there somehow. Elizabeth Arnold has to send that letter to us for some reason. History will try to preserve itself but it has to try very hard when you’re there pushing everything in the wrong direction.”
I retreated from Sir Reginald’s jabbing and leant against the bookshelf on the other side of the room. We were in the small library-cum-drawing room Sir Reginald tended to inhabit. I almost wanted to pick up the stupid old books and throw them at him.
“You’ve done it before,” I said.
“Never to the extent you’re risking,” Sir Reginald said. He sounded weary, like a father trying to talk his teenage son out of buying a dirt bike. “Consider this, my dear, if you go back in time and kill your grandfather, what would happen?”
“You said history likes to preserve itself,” I said. “So, probably, someone else very similar would marry my grandmother, have my parent and have me.”
“And what if you go back in time and do it again? Kill the new grandfather?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged my shoulders. “But I am sure you want to tell me.”
“You get a new grandfather,” Sir Reginald said. “And again and again. But the universe has to work harder and harder at preserving you. Maybe your eye colour changes, or your hair, as it struggles to find similar men for your grandmother. Maybe you end up getting a little younger, or a little older, maybe you lose the ability to play a musical instrument or gain the ability to speak German but the universe tries very hard to keep you as you.”
“So a paradox is fine,” I said, sarcastically.
“So eventually the universe decides that the problem isn’t with history, the problem is with you. Rather than pushing more plaster into the cracks it simply tears the wall down and puts it back together but this time there is no Hannah Delaronde. There is no rampant murder of her antecedents, and history can roll on happily.” Sir Reginald pointed his cane at me again. “Can you say you know where that point is? Do you know what changes to history will result in your disappearance?”
“…No,” I sighed.
“Then please trust someone who does.” Sir Reginald lowered his cane. “The timing will still have to be delicate, but we can visit Lord Clarendon in 1666 after all the events of the fire and there is no risk of paradox.”
“This is why you came with me to see Joan, isn’t it?” I glared at him. “Because you think I’ll make a paradox.”
“You have suggested... several times now... to try and solve this mystery from the riskier side of the fire,” Sir Reginald said. “You wouldn’t dream of suggesting that we solve the theft of the treaty by turning up on the day it was stolen and watching to see who took it, so why do you insist on watching John Arnold all the time?”
Because he’s nice? Because he was willing to try to save my life once? Because he doesn’t deserve to die? Of all the men in the seventeenth century he’s the only one who felt like he had an honest soul? It didn’t feel right just to view him as another corpse. I wanted to help him. I couldn’t stop him dying in the fire, but I could at least try giving him a friend before he died. He’d lost so many to the plague.
I didn’t tell any of that to Sir Reginald. Instead I just muttered.
“Because I’m an idiot.”
“No, corn rose, you are the brightest mind of your age, now come, we must go hence to Lord Clarendon’s and find out what we can about his involvement with John Arnold.” I fell into step with Sir Reginald sulkily and down the steps to the time machine.
We landed in St James. The Tudor palace and parkland hadn’t changed much into the seventeenth century, or even by the twenty-first, but seemed taller, grander, than they had before without the twenty-first century crowding around them. It was well into November now and the bare trees let me see through to all the mansions that surrounded the palace.
“Clarendon House is still unfinished and unfurnished,” Sir Reginald directed me towards one of the many stately houses that surrounded the palace. “Berkshire House is a more than pleasant tenancy until it is finished.”
The name of Sir Reginald Derby opened the doors into the house, through an atrium that could have swallowed the entirety of Jacob’s town house, and along to a drawing room that ove
rlooked St James’s Park.
A vast bulk of a man occupied a couch angled so he could look out at the parkland. A periwig on his head gave him curls down to the shoulder, but it was an older style than others I’d seen. He wore black velvet pleated with silk and gold. Gold embroidery, gold filigree, and a great gold chain of office. His pudgy face had piercing eyes looking far younger than the rest of him, and a tight Stuart goatee.
“My Lord Clarendon,” Sir Reginald inclined his head as he approached, “I am Sir Reginald Derby III, and this is my associate Ms Hannah Delaronde.”
“Fashions in Derby are stranger than I feared,” Clarendon said, looking us over. “Do not stand on ceremony.” He indicated some chairs opposite. The small writing desk beside them suggested they were usually occupied by Clarendon’s secretary. Certainly Clarendon himself would never fit into such a small, delicate chair.
“Do you know who I am?” Sir Reginald asked, reclining in the chair and adjusting his trousers.
“I know what the buffoons in court whisper to each other,” Clarendon said. His voice was rich and deep, like an actor. “The rumours of a great truth seeker, a philosopher against crime. To see a myth in the flesh is the only reason you passed my door. You say you are the third Sir Reginald? Then perhaps the susurrations fall at your father’s, or your father’s father’s feet.”
“They fall at mine,” Sir Reginald assured him. “I call myself a detective. I detect what other men cannot.”
“Presumptive.”
“Accurate.”
“Then what do you wish of me?” Clarendon adjusted himself on the couch. “My curiosity is slaked, I can offer you little more time. The kingdom does not rule itself. Any longer.”
“Do you know Mr John Arnold?” Sir Reginald asked. Clarendon clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. After a few moments he opened them again.
“I know a John Arnold. He’s a merchant, wares of wine, oranges and lemons from the Spaniards and Moors.”