“Where are you going?”
“Covent Garden. You coming?”
Tayte didn’t know what to do. He looked back at the lorry and at the driver who was inspecting the damage. He saw his briefcase in the gutter and went after it, wincing at the pain in his shoulder as he stooped to pick it up. He looked up at Jean, who was already growing distant.
“Wait!” he called after her. “Hold on, I’m coming!”
She disappeared down a side street and Tayte ran to catch up. Somewhere behind him he heard someone shouting but he didn’t turn around.
“Jean! Wait up!”
When Tayte caught up with her they walked at a fast pace along several side streets until Tayte was lost. He didn’t have to ask if her leg was okay. If it hurt at all it didn’t show. He could barely keep up.
“We need to talk about what happened back there.”
Jean stopped. She turned to face him. “So what do you think just happened?”
“First, you need to calm down.”
Jean took a deep breath and forced it out again. “There,” she said. “I’m calm.”
Tayte thought she still looked like she wanted to break something. “So why don’t I believe you?”
Jean huffed, fists still clenched. “It pisses me off, that’s all. One reckless driver - that’s all it takes. We could have been killed. Then what would have happened?”
Tayte realised she was really wondering what would happen to Elliot. “You think that was an accident?”
“I see it all the time. A thousand motorcyclists die every year in London and the vast majority of those accidents are because of idiots like that. I hope I see his ugly face again some day.”
“Come on, Jean, it’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Jean turned away and started walking again, turning onto a busy main road. Tayte supposed it could have been an accident. The Security Service didn’t want them dead. Not yet anyway. And if they did they would be dead already. He thought about Michel Levant and dismissed him. He still had Levant pegged for the writer of the note Jean found under her door. As he saw it, everyone involved in this for one reason or another wanted them to find what they were looking for. He thought about Joseph Cornell then and knew he couldn’t rule him out. But why try to make it look like an accident? All Tayte knew was that he hated coincidences. To his mind, someone clearly wanted to stop them from finding what they were looking for altogether, but who?
“Come on,” Jean said.
She stuck her arm out and started to run. Over his shoulder Tayte saw a double-decker bus indicate and pull over. The sign on the front read, ‘Holborn via Covent Garden’. As they boarded, Jean offered him a weak smile.
“At least my glasses didn’t break,” she said. Then she tugged Tayte’s sleeve, drawing attention to it. “You ripped your jacket.”
Tayte looked. It was torn at the shoulder where he’d made first contact with the Tarmac. He snorted. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve given up all hope of taking any of my suits home with me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They got off the bus at The Strand and made their way along Bedford Street towards Covent Garden, entering the grounds of St Paul’s Church via Inigo Place, which, Jean informed Tayte, was named after Inigo Jones, the architect who designed the building and the Covent Garden Piazza. Tayte scanned the area for headstones but all he saw was a colourful courtyard rose-garden with grey wooden benches lining the walkway. It was busier than he’d expected, but this peaceful setting amidst Victorian townhouses, coupled with the warm sunshine and the fact that it was lunchtime, made the reason entirely evident. Almost everyone he could see was eating, which did nothing to stay his own appetite.
“This doesn’t look promising either,” Tayte said as they walked. He couldn’t see a single memorial, upright or vertical. “We’ll go straight in this time,” he added. “Keep your fingers crossed.”
As they drew closer, Tayte heard a familiar sound that made him think of Marcus. It was a street performer talking and laughing into a PA system in the piazza on the other side of the church. It reminded him how close they were to the restaurant where his friend had been murdered. He tried to put those thoughts aside for now as they took the few steps up to the main entrance, passing a billboard advertising a play called Dido and Aeneas.
“It’s a theatre, too?” Tayte said.
Jean nodded. “I read on the BlackBerry that it’s called the Actors’ Church. Apparently it’s a longstanding tradition.”
They went inside.
“It’s dark,” Jean said.
Tayte peered in, letting his eyes adjust after the bright sunlight. The interior was small and nothing like the church at Hammersmith. “Busy, too,” he said. “Looks like they’re getting ready for a service.” He didn’t know whether to pass through the inner doors or not.
“Can I help you?”
Tayte spun around to see a bright faced woman in navy-blue, whom he put somewhere in her fifties. She was carrying an armful of pamphlets.
Jean didn’t say anything. She just returned the woman’s smile, leaving the talking to Tayte this time.
“Hi,” he said. “Is this a bad time for a visit?”
“Not if you want to celebrate the Eucharist with us. Holy Communion begins in fifteen minutes.” She offered them both a pamphlet. “Would you like a service-sheet?”
“No thanks,” Tayte said. “We don’t really have the time. “I’m just a genealogist looking for a record. Do you keep any information at the church apart from these plaques on the walls?”
“Most of them commemorate the achievements of the various actors who’ve passed through here at one time or another,” the woman said. “WS Gilbert of the Gilbert and Sullivan duo was baptised here.” She paused. “But I don’t suppose you’re interested in any of that.”
On any other day Tayte would have been very interested. Gilbert and Sullivan had composed the music for most of his favourite musicals.
“Not today,” he said. “Just parish registers.”
“I’m afraid we don’t keep them here any more.”
Tayte half expected as much.
“But we do have a series of books published by the Harleian Society that might be of interest to you.”
Tayte flashed his eyes at Jean. Long before the world went digital the Harleian Society had been transcribing collections of information that were of particular value to genealogists and heraldists.
“Do you have their Parish Register series?” Tayte asked.
“I’m sure we do. I think one of the previous rectors made a hobby of collecting them. The books were here long before me and I’ve been a churchwarden at St Paul’s for twelve years now.”
“We’re only interested in 1697 to 1700,” Tayte said. “Do you think we could take a look?”
The woman wrinkled her nose. “If you’re quick,” she said. “Follow me.”
She led Tayte and Jean around the congregation into a windowless room that looked like it was used for church administration. There was a desk with a computer screen and keyboard. Papers and books were everywhere.
“They’re in here,” The woman said, going to a cabinet on the far side of the room. She pulled out a drawer and began to sift through the contents.
“Here we are,” she said. “The Registers of St Paul’s Church Covent Garden Vol. IV - 1653-1752.” She turned to face them again. “How does that sound?”
Tayte was smiling. “That sounds perfect.”
The woman put the book on the desk and Tayte eagerly flicked through the pages while Jean looked over his shoulder. When he found the end of the seventeenth century, he fished in his jacket pocket for the slip of paper containing the dates they were interested in.
“March 25th, 1697,” he said, still turning pages. A moment later he stopped, looked at Jean and shook his head. “There’s just one burial recorded. It’s nearly three weeks out.” He checked the next date, which was for 1698. “December
15th,” he said. There were two registered burials and one birth that month: two burials in the first week and one birth on the 28th. He flicked ahead to 1700. “One to go,” he said. “January 25th.”
A moment later he looked up again.
“No good?” the churchwarden said.
Tayte shook his head and noted from Jean’s expression that she shared his disappointment. “One birth and one death,” he said. “Both on the same day and three weeks too late.”
“The same day?” the warden said. She found the entry. “Oh, yes, the Booth family,” she added, shaking her head. “Tragic. The mother died giving birth. Then eight years later the daughter drowned in the Thames. Her poor father could never forgive himself for her death, or so the story goes.”
“That’s very interesting,” Tayte said, keen to move on.
“They have an inscription in the churchyard,” the warden continued. “There are several others there and copies of registers are prone to error, aren’t they? It might be worth a look.”
“Very much so,” Tayte said. “But I didn’t see any memorial inscriptions on the way through.”
“They’re around the corner to your right as you leave. We have a row of headstones against the wall and some inscriptions on the ground.”
“Then we’ll leave you to your communion,” Tayte said. “I’m sure we’ve already taken up too much of your time.”
On the way out, Tayte began to question his logic. He gazed absently at the myriad plaques on the walls as they walked, reading abstract words here and there, taking little in.
“What else could it be?” he said, urging himself to think.
“Something to do with the Ouroboros?” Jean said.
Tayte shook his head. “Too vague. Having to find any kind of mark is leaving too much to chance. The ahnentafel’s like a treasure map and those things are never vague. Its creator couldn’t risk any kind of misinterpretation.”
“I suppose not,” Jean said. “A memorial carrying a date that matches one of Queen Anne’s failed pregnancies on the other hand is very specific.”
“Yes, it is.”
“So let’s stick with it,” Jean said. “We still have the church at Shadwell to try when we’ve finished here.” She scoffed. “We should have started our search there. East to west. You know things are always in the last place you look.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Tayte said as they approached the light beyond the main doors and behind them the Eucharist began.
Tayte fell behind and caught up with Jean at the bottom of the steps outside the church.
“What kept you?”
He dropped to his knees and opened his briefcase. He took out the genealogy charts Marcus Brown had compiled for Julian Davenport and Douglas Jones and spread them out on the flagstones.
“What is it?” Jean said. “Have you found something?”
Tayte didn’t answer right away. He traced a finger over the names on Jones’s chart and then did the same with Davenport’s. He paused over them for several seconds then he shook his head and folded them away again.
“It’s nothing,” he said, slipping the charts back into his briefcase. “I was just wondering whether any of those other dates in the burial register appeared anywhere else here. They don’t.” He stood up. “Let’s take a look at those headstones.”
They kept to their right and walked around the church as directed. The area was bleak and colourless by comparison to the gardens they had just left. The ground was covered with grey paving slabs and there was a narrow, flowerless shrub border to one side. Everything was overshadowed by the trees that grew out of the paving, blocking the sunlight. The headstones the churchwarden had mentioned were lined up against the church wall to their right, like a row of knockdown targets at a fair.
They walked over several horizontal memorials to get there. Those that were legible bore dates from the late eighteenth century and he saw one that was barely discernible, the inscription all but gone. He wondered whether it had been missed from the Harleian Society’s publication because of its condition when the register was compiled. What if it was the very grave they hoped to find - the heir’s identity now lost for all time? He wondered how that would sit with the British Security Service and whoever had offered the exchange for Jean’s son.
They approached the headstones and walked the line from one to the next as though inspecting a parade, becoming increasingly disheartened with every inscription they read. The dates were mostly from the early to mid 1700s. They were old but offered no connection. Heading back to the gardens, something caught Jean’s eye and she went to the wall in shadow.
“Look,” she said, pointing to an inscription set into the corner by her feet. “It’s for the Booth family the churchwarden told us about. The drowned girl.”
Tayte knelt beside it. It bore three dates. One was for a loving husband on the 4th of June, 1739. Another was for his beloved wife on the 14th of February 1700, and the third was for their daughter, who was born on the same day and died eight years later in 1708 as the churchwarden had said.
“She drowned the same year our Royal Society Fellows were hanged,” Tayte said.
“Pity she was born three weeks too late,” Jean countered.
Central to the inscription was a sentence that made it clear how the churchwarden knew that the father could never forgive himself for his daughter’s death.
“I let her die,” Tayte said as he read it.
Jean knelt down and ran her fingers over the stone. “That’s very sad.”
Tayte turned away. “I’ve read a thousand inscriptions just like it. Come on. Nothing here matches what we’re looking for.”
Jean eyed him askance.
“What did I say?”
She shook her head at him. “I suppose I’d come to think of you as someone with a little more sensitivity, that’s all.”
They headed back around the church.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Tayte said. “You just see so much of a thing that it stops registering.”
“Like pathologists and autopsies?”
Tayte smiled. “Kind of, I guess.”
They were in the garden again and Tayte noticed that there was more than one exit. “How do we get to the last of our St Paul’s churches?”
“This way to Shadwell,” Jean said, indicating an arch to their right that led out through the townhouses. “We can take the Tube from Covent Garden station, change at Holborn and pick up the DLR at Bank. It’s on the Thames.”
“DLR?”
“The Docklands Light Railway.”
They emerged onto King Street amidst a bustle of people, whom Tayte supposed were a blend of tourists, shoppers and office workers taking their lunch break, all heading to and from the piazza. They joined the throng and made their way towards the market square as the crowd thickened and their pace slowed to a shuffle.
“It’s not usually this busy here on Wednesdays,” Jean said, almost having to shout.
“I guess it is lunchtime,” Tayte said. He wanted to hold her hand so they didn’t get separated but he shied away from the idea.
Jean was trying to look ahead through the crowd, lifting her chin, walking on tiptoes. “There must be something going on.”
They reached the edge of the piazza and the din from the street performers grew. It was a happy sound, if a little harsh to Tayte’s ears, and he couldn’t stop himself from trying to get a look at what all the fuss was about. There was a distinctly carnival atmosphere to the place. Beneath the pillared portico of St Paul’s Church where it abutted the piazza, red, white and green flags hung like bunting between the pillars, matching the Tshirts he could now see on many of the people there.
He saw several posters bearing the words, ‘Republic Britain Now!’ and quickly realised that the event was part of a political campaign. A small stage had been set up behind a street performer who was riding a high unicycle whilst juggling batons, warming up the crowd. It was easy to get c
aught up in it all and Tayte did. So much so that when he turned back to Jean to make sure he was still shuffling in the right direction, she was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tayte jumped in the air to get a clear view above the crowd.
“Jean!”
She didn’t answer and he couldn’t see her. He jumped again and began to turn in a slow circle.
Where is she?
Movement in the otherwise calm crowd suddenly drew his attention. Someone was pushing through the people towards him. All he could see of the man was his thick neck and his short blonde hair - and the urgency in his eyes as he came right at him. The man touched a hand to his ear, lips moving like he was talking to someone via a Bluetooth headset or a two-way radio. Then he saw someone else moving fast to his right, knocking people aside as he came in from the market.
Tayte knew there was no way he could brave this out with a few well-chosen words like he had in Hammersmith. He looked around for Jean again. Where was she? Did they have her already?
Who the hell are they?
His first two questions were answered when he felt someone tugging at his jacket. Then as he began to sink beneath the crowd he heard a familiar voice.
“Are you crazy? Didn’t you see them?” It was Jean. She looked intense. “The man coming from the market,” she added. “He was driving that blue Ford.”
Tayte was too pleased to see her again to say I told you so. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“There wasn’t time.” She pulled at his jacket again. “We need to get out of here. Stay low.”
They filtered through the crowd like two people trying to find their way out of a cornfield, obscured by everything around them. The going was too slow for Tayte’s liking, but the ever-thickening crowd made it impossible to move any faster. He was crouched low over his briefcase, eyes down at Jean’s boots with no idea which way they were going. The man on the PA sounded louder so he figured they must be heading for the portico where the street performers were.
The Last Queen of England: A Genealogical Crime Mystery #3 (Jefferson Tayte) Page 24