A Masterpiece of Corruption

by L. C. Tyler

  L. C. Tyler was born in Essex and educated at Jesus College, Oxford and City University. His comic crime series featuring author-and-agent duo Ethelred Tressider and Elsie Thirkettle has been twice nominated for Edgar Allan Poe awards in the US and won the Goldsboro Last Laugh Award (best comic crime novel of the year) with Herring in the Library. His new historical crime series, beginning with A Cruel Necessity, features seventeenth-century lawyer, John Grey. He has lived all over the world but more recently has been based in London and West Sussex. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and is currently Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association.

  Website: www.lctyler.com

  Follow on Twitter: @lenctyler

  Also by L. C. Tyler

  A Cruel Necessity

  Copyright

  Published by Constable

  ISBN: 978-1-47211-497-6

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 L. C. Tyler

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Extract from Pestilence copyright © L. C. Tyler, 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Constable

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  To Tom and Rachel

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by L. C. Tyler

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Six Years Later

  My Mother

  Mr S. K.

  Probert

  Mr Secretary Thurloe

  Aminta

  Cromwell

  Dr Bate

  Sir Michael de Ripley

  My Lady Pole

  Mr Cardinal

  Sir Richard Willys

  Mr Plautus

  A Letter

  My Lord Lambert

  My Lord Fairfax

  A Former Physician of the King

  Saint Nicholas

  Mr Allen Brodrick

  Mr Black of Thaxted

  Mr Shufflebottom of Nowhere in Particular

  The Tyrant Charles Stuart, Titular King of the Scots

  Mr John Grey

  Mr Smithson

  His Most Excellent Majesty Charles the Second, by the Grace of God King of England, Scotland, Ireland and France

  Mr Esmond Underhill, His Evidence

  Aminta Pole, Her Evidence

  Sir Felix Clifford

  Lord Pole, His Plan

  Sam Morland

  My Mother

  Postscript

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Shoreham Beach, October 1651

  It both deafens and soothes. The thunderclap as the pebbles are flung landward in a cloud of salt spray, then the long, hollow sucking-back as the dark water rushes home. The sea has inched itself almost to the ragged line of bleached driftwood left by the last high tide. There is no point in delaying further, watching one foam-flecked wave follow another. Cromwell’s troops are out there somewhere in the black circle of the Downs.

  The King does, however, delay further. It is still his right. His Divine Right, you might say. He is looking at some far point on the deserted beach, pale gold in the moonlight. He stands, wrapped tightly in his rough woollen cloak, on the last precious sliver of his kingdom.

  ‘The boat, Your Majesty,’ says the taller and older of his two companions, a nervous man it would seem and made more nervous by having to repeat himself. ‘A passage at last – France … safety. Would it please Your Majesty to embark?’

  ‘Would it please me?’ The King cannot help laughing, even now. Laughter. He’ll always be known for it. Even during the many long, bleak years to come.

  ‘It would be best to board now, sir,’ says the shorter of his companions. He’s young, little more than a boy, but he has the sort of aristocratic confidence that new money will never buy you. He’s a baronet, having already inherited the title from a father who died contentedly in the old King’s service. The young baronet would be willing to die in the new King’s service if he had to, but preferably not tonight under this bright moon. They need to get the King into the boat before they are all spotted dithering in a knot on the shoreline.

  Time, which was once so plentiful, has run out.

  ‘It will be at least another hour until the tide is high enough,’ says the King.

  ‘In an hour’s time, Captain Tattersall may have sobered up,’ the young baronet points out. ‘He may then remember that Your Majesty has a price of one thousand Pounds on his head. It would be more convenient if you and he were both on board when that happens. It would certainly be better that he should not remember it while still within shouting distance of some meddlesome officer of the Republic.’

  ‘Tattersall says he is loyal to the Crown.’

  ‘The whole country was loyal to the Crown once. Men’s loyalties change nowadays almost without their noticing. Tattersall is a greasy fellow and smells of fish, but for the moment he sincerely believes he is a Royalist. He has a fine and noble role to play if we can but keep him drunk. And there may yet be men in England whose support for you does not depend on strong ale. Once this night’s work is complete, we begin the task of finding them and rallying them.’

  ‘You won’t cross to France with me?’

  ‘Wilmot will go with you. We two shall stay.’

  The King – for so he can call himself, having been crowned in Scotland at least – laughs again. ‘Faith! That will be an uneven contest, Sir Michael: Cromwell’s Ironsides on the one hand and any sober Cavaliers you can sweep up on the other. Parliament will outnumber you a hundred to one.’

  ‘They merely have the numbers. We have the cunning. There’s more than one way to fight a war.’

  The King nods. He has fought the war several ways since Cromwell executed his father, and none of them have been good. That’s how he has ended up on Shoreham beach, waiting for the turn of the tide. If they know another way, let them try it by all means.

  ‘Where’s Tattersall now?’ he asks.

  ‘I can see the good captain making his way down from the tavern. Very slowly.’

  ‘Still loyal to the Crown?’

  ‘Any more loyal and he would pass out.’

  ‘France it is, then,’ says the King benignly. ‘God pox it.’

  He sits motionless in the bows as the sails unfurl, flap wildly, then fill. He does not look back at the lumpy pebble beach nor at the dark mass of the South Downs gathered behind it. His eyes are on the future. The past has proved a disappointing place to be.

  The small boat’s outline is visible in the moonlight for some time as it tacks backwards and forwards. A Royalist tide is with them, but the wind is fickle and Parliamentary – and the captain’s commands are sometimes slurred and difficult to understand. With a slow reluctance, the masts and canvas dwindle into nothing. The moon shines down on a floating image of itself in an otherwise empty world of flickering water.

  ‘That’s the end, then,’ says the taller man. ‘We’ve just watched the last King of England creep away in a coal barge, leaving his country to rot as it pleases. You, Sir
Michael, may do as you see best, but when the Roundheads arrive, I intend to assure them of my undying loyalty to Parliament.’

  ‘You won’t help me carry on the fight? You won’t help me rally some good-hearted gentlemen to the cause?’

  ‘What fight? What cause? The King is gone. And, just in case you were going to say it, I have to point out that if God ever was on our side, He defected to Cromwell in ’45 or ’46. The war is lost. For all your brave words, only a fool would now take up arms for the Stuarts. Cromwell has the best army in Europe after the King of Spain. We have nothing.’

  ‘We have our wits,’ says Sir Michael. ‘And God will see the error of His ways in due course. In the meantime, we must hide our allegiances. We must dissemble. We must plot and scheme. We must wait in the shadows, gather information and write letters. Perhaps with our eyes and our pens we can gain what we have lost with our fists and our swords.’

  ‘Our pens? I doubt you will undo many Roundheads with your pen, however much you sharpen it.’

  Sir Michael smiles. ‘Really? I’ll wager I can write a letter that will kill any man who reads it.’

  Six Years Later

  London, December 1657

  The letter is a single sheet of paper, folded in two and unsealed. It would have been easy for my landlady to have read the contents, which means that she has.

  ‘It was shoved under the door,’ she says, making a little pushing motion with her hand, illustrative of the method of delivery. Her face gives nothing away. A plaster saint could not bear a countenance more innocent.

  ‘So you didn’t see who left it?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course I saw who left it. What do you take me for? I spied him through the small window.’

  I wait for her to continue, but information of this sort is not to be had without a little begging.

  ‘And, pray, what did you see, Mistress Reynolds?’

  ‘I saw a fine gentleman, velvet cloak, silk breeches, beaver hat. And lace. Such a lot of lace.’ She sighs. There is too little lace in this world today. Too little lace, too much black fustian. Too many sermons, too little laughter. Too much Puritanism, too many prohibitions. Too many fast days and no Christmas ever again. That is her complaint. Disappointingly for her, I own no lace at all and do not regret the lack of a tyrant King. I am not the lodger she hoped for when her husband died and left her so much useful space in the house.

  ‘You saw his face?’ I ask.

  ‘He was already walking away.’

  ‘You didn’t speak to him then – you didn’t ask who the letter was for?’

  ‘I told you – he was walking away.’

  ‘So this may not even be intended for me?’ I turn the paper over again in my hand. It does not bear my name, though, equally, it does not bear anyone else’s name. ‘I mean, if he didn’t say it was for John Grey … He might have meant it for you, Mistress Reynolds.’

  ‘Why should anyone write to me like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like in the letter.’

  So, she has read it then. But plaster saints are mere Popish idols and only a fool would trust them not to intercept mail.

  ‘Nobody except my mother knows that I am here,’ I say.

  This is not quite true. My tutor at Lincoln’s Inn knows where to find me and I believe that my tailor has discovered my address as a precautionary measure. But I am a new arrival in London and am on letter-writing terms with few. Anyway, as I too read my letter, I see that I have many good reasons for suspecting my mother in this.

  Mr S. K. presents his compliments to one newly arrived and begs your presence at his chambers at Gray’s Inn. He wishes to be better acquainted with you. Have no fears – he is an honourable man and wishes you no hurt. Tonight at seven o’clock would be agreeable. Ask the porter for directions. The one-eyed porter, not the other one.

  ‘I don’t know anyone called Mr S. K.,’ she says. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘Then it clearly is for you, Mr Grey.’

  ‘I must assume so.’

  ‘He is a friend of yours?’

  ‘Mr S. K.? A friend of my mother’s.’ I had hoped he was merely a former friend, but it would seem not.

  ‘You have never met him yourself?’

  ‘After a fashion, but we are not well acquainted.’

  ‘And that is why he wishes to set your mind at rest that he intends you no harm?’ She purses her lips, as she so often does. It is one of the few things she does really well.

  ‘I agree that the wording is odd in a social invitation, but it is like him to give such an assurance. It is superfluous, which is also much like him. I have no fears for my safety.’

  ‘He is a gentleman?’

  I notice that my landlady stresses the word ‘gentleman’. A person of breeding and taste. A person with gold in his purse. A person with no need to toil for his bread nor to present his bill with compliments and respectfully request prompt payment of the same. Mistress Reynolds has a daughter of slightly more than marriageable age. It is rare for a day to pass without her expressing the fervent hope that I may invite one of my unattached gentleman friends to my chamber, where her daughter may serve us with wine and display such charms as she possesses, which are fewer than her mother imagines. But only a real gentleman will pass muster. She has never encouraged her daughter to linger in my chamber when I am alone there, nor has she encouraged me to consider myself a suitor in any way.

  ‘You could say Mr S. K. was a gentleman,’ I concede.

  ‘Not a lawyer like you then?’ The Gray’s Inn address worries her.

  ‘Some lawyers might be considered gentlemen,’ I say.

  She shakes her head. She has met lawyers before. Like surgeons, we are merely amongst the better sort of tradesmen in her eyes. ‘Your friend is a soldier, perhaps?’ she suggests. An army officer (at least, a Royalist one) may be impoverished, drunk or illiterate, but nobody would question his gentility.

  ‘He has certainly seen a great deal of fighting,’ I say.

  ‘He is of good family?’

  ‘He is related to many of the greatest families in the land.’

  ‘Does he possess much land himself?’ She asks the question as though neither she nor her daughter could have any personal financial interest.

  ‘Enough land to satisfy most men, and indeed women, though some of it is forfeit to the State because of his support for the late tyrant Charles Stuart.’

  She nods. For her this is no impediment. Like my mother, she still clings to the notion that the Stuarts may one day return and we shall have a King and all will be well. Ancestral castles and abbeys will slip effortlessly back into the hands of impoverished and exiled Cavaliers. Young girls, garlanded in spring flowers, will dance around maypoles. Husbands, handsome and tractable, will be in plentiful supply for maids and widows alike.

  ‘He has a title perhaps?’ she asks.

  ‘He possesses many an ancient title.’

  She nods again. Not merely a gentleman then, but a nobleman. And the multiplicity of titles points to an ancient Earldom, if not a Marquisate. ‘And your good friend … he clearly lives in London?’

  ‘He is no friend, but he lives in London, Brussels, Paris, Yorkshire, Wales, Antwerp, Devon, Calais … He has the ability to be in many places at once, and nowhere at all.’

  My landlady frowns. She is no fool and knows when I am mocking her. But she does not yet know what the joke is.

  ‘But he has not been banished for his loyalty to the true King?’

  ‘We have no King, Mistress Reynolds, true or otherwise. Only the threadbare Pretender named Charles Stuart living in the Spanish Netherlands. As for Mr S. K., he travels freely enough by all accounts.’

  This last mollifies her a little, but she is still suspicious. Perhaps I am grinning more than I think. She makes one last sally.

  ‘Then, Mr Grey, I hope you will bring him here and take wine with us?’

  ‘That is impossible.’<
br />
  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ I say, ‘he is scarcely six years old.’

  ‘But you said he is a soldier!’

  ‘I assure you he is not a day older.’

  My landlady glares at me. ‘If you were a proper gentleman yourself, you would not make fun of a poor widow woman so. Indeed you would not.’

  ‘I beg pardon, Mistress,’ I begin, but she has turned with a great swish of skirts and petticoats, and is gone back down to her kitchen before I can explain the joke. For everything I have said about Mr S. K. is true. He is scarce six and may not live to be seven. But I have no intention of befriending him in any way and I intend to go and tell him so to his bearded face.

  For this is my mother’s doing. Oh yes, there can be no mistake about that. She knew Mr S. K. very well indeed. My fear is that she has not abandoned that connection as she promised me she would.

  ‘I hope that you are no longer in correspondence with Mr S. K.,’ I said to her not long ago.

  ‘Of course not, dear,’ she said, carefully threading a needle. ‘I gave all that up, just as you proposed. I am, after all, the wife of a Justice of the Peace.’

  ‘It would be dangerous if you hadn’t,’ I said.

  ‘You must trust me that I have,’ she said, breaking off the crimson thread. ‘Though your father, of course, still knows the gentleman concerned.’

  ‘My late father,’ I said.

  She looked up from her sewing, frowning, head on one side.

  ‘My late father may have known him,’ I said.

  ‘But of course. Your poor lamented father,’ she said, pushing back a wayward curl and resuming her work. ‘Whom we miss greatly.’

  ‘Precisely,’ I said. ‘My dead father. Whom we miss. Let us not forget that. Speaking as a lawyer, my advice to you is that you should not forget that my father is sadly no longer with us.’

  My Mother

  My mother’s difficulty in recalling that my father is dead is due in no small measure to the fact that he is alive and living in Brussels with a Flemish whore.