Chaloner did not think he had ever seen the colonel so angry. He said nothing as he was escorted to the palace gaol, where he and the others were given separate cells in which to wait. The doors were not locked, but there was no point in trying to escape, even so.
Spymaster Williamson arrived almost immediately, but neither he nor May spoke until they were well away. Through the bars in his window, Chaloner watched the two men stride across the yard, May speaking and Williamson nodding. Then all was quiet, because either Clarendon and Bristol could not be found, or they declined to release their recalcitrant retainers until a more convenient time.
A while later, there was a furious commotion in the yard outside, as a horse, saddled and ready for riding, bucked and cavorted like a wild thing. Soldiers rushed towards it, making it even more agitated, and there were shouts of horror when a flailing hoof caught one man on the temple with a sickening thud. In the next room, Chaloner heard Willys snigger at the spectacle, although the laughter stopped abruptly when Wiseman hurried to help the fallen man, then stepped back shaking his head. Blood began to pool on the cobbles, and Chaloner went to sit on the bench again, not wanting to see more.
Not long after, he heard murmuring in Willys’s room and supposed Bristol had arrived. There was a thump, followed by footsteps moving across floorboards that creaked like a rusty hinge, then peace again. Eventually, there were more voices as a crowd of people clattered into the prison. They burst into Willys’s room, and there was a short silence, followed by an ear-splitting howl of outrage. Then the door to Chaloner’s room was hurled open and Bristol stood there, quaking in fury.
‘You killed him!’ he yelled. ‘You murdered Willys!’
Chaloner regarded Bristol in astonishment, wondering whether the man had been drinking. Behind him, other courtiers were pushing their way forward, and among them was May. The odour of sweat, onions, horse and French perfume wafted into the small chamber as more and more people crammed themselves inside, eager to miss nothing of the brewing confrontation.
‘Willys is dead,’ said May, fingering the dagger he carried in his belt. ‘Stabbed. You and he were alone in this part of the building, so you had better start explaining yourself.’
‘Someone came to release him,’ said Chaloner, keeping his voice steady so as not to reveal his growing alarm. ‘I heard them talking together.’
But he had also heard a thump and retreating footsteps, and if it had not been Bristol coming to retrieve his aide, then it had been Willys’s murderer. But why would anyone want to kill Willys? With a sinking feeling, Chaloner saw the man with the obvious motive was himself – he and Willys had quarrelled publicly, and then they had been left alone in adjoining rooms while the horse had distracted the guards. To the dispassionate observer, it would look as though Chaloner had seized an opportunity to dispatch his enemy.
‘Liar!’ fumed Bristol. He drew his sword and began to advance. ‘You slipped into his room when he was watching the escapade with the nag, and you stabbed him in the back.’
‘Wait, My Lord!’ cried Holles, stepping between Chaloner and the enraged noble. ‘If Heyden has committed a crime, we shall go through the proper procedures. We do not dispense justice ourselves.’
‘Why not?’ demanded May. ‘Heyden is the only one who could have killed Willys, and his guilt is obvious. Besides, you were willing to shoot him earlier.’
‘That was when he was armed,’ argued Holles. ‘He is not armed now, and we do not want folk thinking we go around skewering people whenever we feel like it. Put up your sword, My Lord. It is for the best.’
May was disgusted. ‘I am just grateful Williamson rescued me straight away, or Heyden would have slaughtered me, too. The horse’s antics were just what he needed – they lured the guards outside, and let him get Willys alone.’
‘My men did go to help with the horse,’ admitted Holles, regarding Chaloner uneasily. An expression of relief crossed his face as something occurred to him. ‘But Heyden cannot be the killer. We disarmed him – we disarmed all of you. He had nothing to use on Willys.’
‘In Ireland, he carried additional weapons in his sleeve and boot,’ said May. He grinned in triumph when Holles’s second search revealed the knife he had missed the first time, and turned to Bristol. ‘You should kill him while you can, My Lord, or Clarendon will find a way to inveigle him a pardon.’
Bristol stared at Chaloner for a long time before sheathing his sword. May gaped at him in dismay.
‘No,’ said Bristol quietly, his temper now under control. ‘I do not want the Lord Chancellor complaining that we killed his henchman in cold blood. It is better to drag Heyden through the public courts – and Clarendon will be mired with him.’
‘I have just inspected Willys, My Lord,’ announced Wiseman, pushing his way through the assembled courtiers like a stately galleon through a flotilla of barges. ‘As a surgeon, I have seen more cadavers than you could dream about. Come, and I shall show you something important.’
Bristol baulked at being issued an order, but his curiosity and Wiseman’s brash confidence prompted him to do as he was told. Willys was lying near the window, blood seeping from a wound in his back. When everyone, including Chaloner, had entered the cell, the medic began to hold forth.
‘The fact that Willys received a blade between his shoulders means he knew his killer,’ he declared, speaking as though his conclusions were fact, not opinion. ‘And he trusted him. Willys was not a complete imbecile, and would never have turned his back on Heyden, given what had happened earlier today. Ergo, Heyden is not the killer.’
‘Rubbish!’ shouted May, appalled to see Chaloner exonerated with such ease. ‘He sneaked in when Willys was preoccupied with watching the horse, and took him unawares.’
‘I had not finished what I was going to say,’ said Wiseman haughtily. ‘However, I shall interrupt my erudite analysis to refute your asinine theory, if that is what you want. These floorboards creak, as you can see for yourself, and Willys would have heard Heyden coming – even above the racket emanating from the yard. So, your assertion, Mr May, is both erroneous and foolish.’
‘How dare you—’ began May, but Bristol held up his hand and nodded for Wiseman to continue.
‘My next conclusion pertains to the wound.’ The surgeon pulled the clothes away from the injury and took from Holles the dagger that had been in Chaloner’s boot. ‘Even the most ignorant of us’ – here he looked pointedly at May – ‘will see that this broad-bladed weapon cannot possibly have made this tiny round hole.’
‘Heyden is a skilled intelligence officer,’ said May tightly. ‘Of course he knows how to jab a blade into his victims with the minimum of damage.’
‘Then show me the blood,’ ordered Wiseman, handing him the knife. ‘If that is the murder weapon, it will be stained with gore, as will the killer himself. Can you see even the smallest speck of red on it – or on him?’
‘He cleaned it,’ argued May, not ready to concede defeat. ‘He had plenty of time.’
‘Cleaned it with what?’ pressed Wiseman. ‘There is no water here, and you cannot wipe blood off clothes anyway. It leaves indelible marks – and believe me, I know.’
May was sullen. ‘Your “evidence” is circumstantial. It proves nothing.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Wiseman. ‘It makes a powerful case for Heyden’s innocence. And there is more. If he did kill Willys, then why did he return to his own cell – to sit and wait for the alarm to be raised? Why did he not take the opportunity to escape? The guards had gone, so there was no one to stop him.’
‘He wanted to confuse us,’ claimed May. ‘He—’
‘Oh, you are certainly confused,’ agreed Wiseman, drawing an amused titter from the watching courtiers. He looked away, as if he could not be bothered to waste time on the likes of May. ‘Finally, there is the angle at which the blade penetrated Willys.’
There were exclamations of revulsion as he inserted a thin piece of metal into the hole, t
o demonstrate the path the murder weapon had taken through the body. It ran from left to right, and was obvious enough that Chaloner wondered whether someone had made sure it had looked that way on purpose. He glanced at May and saw satisfaction stamped on his face, as if he had hoped someone would notice.
Bristol knelt by the corpse to assess the evidence for himself. He stood, and regarded the surgeon thoughtfully. ‘This means Willys was struck by a man who held a dagger in his left hand.’
‘Precisely,’ drawled Wiseman.
‘Heyden can use his left arm as well as his right,’ said May immediately. ‘I saw him in France once, fighting double-handed to fend off traitors.’
‘But he cannot do it at the moment,’ said Wiseman. He took Chaloner’s hand and demonstrated how the splint prevented him from holding the knife. ‘It is physi cally impossible for him to grip a blade with sufficient strength to deliver a killing blow, so he would have resorted to his right. Lord Bristol has already established the killer was left-handed, so Heyden cannot be the culprit.’
It was Bristol who asked the question that was uppermost in Chaloner’s mind. ‘Then who is?’
It was not every day the Court was treated to the spectacle of a murder and a man who knew how to interpret clues, and the guardhouse was quickly packed with people, all clamouring questions. Chaloner saw several familiar faces among the many he did not know. At the very back of the crowd were Johnson and Lisle. Lisle was beaming, delighted by his colleague’s clever performance, while Johnson glared sulkily, jealous of the adulation that was being heaped on his rival.
Next to the surgeons, Brodrick and Temple stood in a way that suggested they had arrived together. Chaloner wondered why, when they clearly detested each other, and hoped they had not been plotting. Lady Castlemaine stood near the front, but when she learned Bristol was not going to run anyone through, she pulled a face that registered disappointment, and shouldered her way outside again.
Eaffrey and Behn were there, too. Behn asked, in a loud voice intended to carry, whether Heyden could have hired a left-handed killer. Before Eaffrey could think of a response, the elderly equerry remarked that Behn was a silly young goat to make such a stupid statement. People started to laugh, and the question was forgotten. With a start of surprise, Chaloner recognised Scot’s pale eyes among the equerry’s maze of wrinkles, and smiled when his friend winked at him.
Meanwhile, Bristol and his party were still quizzing Wiseman about his deductions; the surgeon answered with a patronising haughtiness that was only just short of insolence. Bristol was quietly angry – not that he had been deprived of a suspect, but because he had been manoeuvred into accusing the wrong man and made to look rash and volatile. And May was livid because Chaloner had been exonerated.
Chaloner listened to people’s comments, questions and observations, carefully analysing them in the light of what he had heard and seen himself. It was clear someone had either taken advantage of the incident with the horse, or had engineered it to provide a diversion. If the latter was true, then it had worked brilliantly: all the guards had raced outside, leaving ample opportunity for the killer to do his work. Chaloner had heard voices, which told him Willys had conversed with his killer, and Wiseman’s evidence indicated that Willys clearly had not thought he was in danger, or he would not have allowed himself to have been stabbed from behind. The thump had been Willys’s body falling to the floor, and then the murderer had calmly walked away, leaving Chaloner sitting in the cell next door as the prime suspect for the crime.
So, who had knifed Willys and, perhaps more importantly, why? Was it someone who wanted Clarendon’s faction accused of murder, to bring the Earl himself into disrepute? It was certainly the kind of ill-conceived strata gem Temple liked to concoct. Then there was May, delighted with Chaloner’s predicament, and deeply disappointed when Wiseman had exculpated him. Could May have returned to the guardhouse after he had been released? And finally, there was Holles, who always claimed to be the Earl’s man, but who nevertheless had been oddly willing to believe Chaloner’s guilt. It was also Holles who had overlooked the dagger in Chaloner’s boot, which had then later been produced as evidence against him. Had the colonel intended that to happen? Chaloner had considered him an ally, but in the shifting sands of White Hall allegiances, he suddenly found he was not so sure.
Clarendon arrived at last, breathless and elbowing his way through the courtiers to reach his spy. ‘I have only just been told what has happened. Holles swears he sent a servant with a message, but it never arrived and now the fellow is nowhere to be found.’
‘Is that so,’ said Chaloner flatly.
‘You should not have challenged Willys and May to a fight,’ chided the Earl. ‘Thurloe will blame me if you die, and you were reckless to endanger yourself. Did you kill Willys, by the way? I shall not be angry if you did. He was an odious fellow, always trying to damage me.’
‘No, I did not,’ said Chaloner firmly, determined to quash any lingering doubts along those lines. ‘I did not even know he was in danger.’
‘You will have to unveil the culprit, Heyden, or May will avenge Willys by sliding a sly dagger into your ribs. Do you think you can solve the mystery?’
‘I will try,’ said Chaloner unhappily. He did not see how he would succeed – although he understood how the killer had claimed his victim, learning his identity was another matter altogether.
He washed the paint and powder from his face – there was no point in maintaining the disguise now – and left the guardhouse. Outside, folk still milled about. Alice and Temple were with Johnson, and their serious faces suggested business was being transacted. When Chaloner eased closer, to hear what they were saying, Alice hauled the two men away, but she was not quite quick enough to prevent him from learning that Johnson had placed a hundred pounds at Temple’s disposal. It was to be invested with the new owner of Webb’s ship. Chaloner looked around, and saw Behn standing nearby. The Brandenburger’s smile of satisfaction indicated that Temple was operating on his behalf, and Chaloner found himself hoping with all his heart that the ship would flounder before it could reap its grim cargo – and that they would both lose every penny they had ploughed into the filthy venture.
‘These accusations were only levelled because you are Lord Clarendon’s man,’ said Lisle, stretching out a brown hand to waylay the spy as he zig-zagged through the crowd. ‘This spat between him and Bristol is becoming increasingly bitter, and the likes of you and Willys are nothing but pawns.’
‘Then virtually everyone here is in danger, too,’ said Chaloner, gesturing around him. ‘Most have declared a preference for one side or the other.’
Lisle grimaced. ‘The follies of men never fail to amaze me. There is war brewing with the Dutch, outbreaks of a deadly plague in Venice, and distressing levels of poverty in our great capital. Yet all the Court cares about is this ridiculous squabble. I am just thankful that I have managed to resist the attempts of both sides to recruit me – there are far more productive things to occupy my time, such as my charitable work in the city’s hospitals. Do you still plan to visit me on Saturday?’
Wild horses would not have kept Chaloner from keeping the appointment. He nodded.
‘It will be a busy day for me, so come between Dillon’s hanging and the Public Anatomy – I shall be hosting Company guests after that.’
‘What are you two whispering about?’ demanded Wiseman, coming to join them. He seemed larger than ever, swelled as he was with the accolades of his success. ‘My astute detection work?’
Lisle beamed at him, to hide his own discomfort. ‘You were a credit to our Company today, and we shall make sure all our colleagues know it. Eh, Johnson?’
Johnson’s face was a mask of pure envy as he approached. ‘You need not bother, Master Lisle. I am sure he is quite capable of informing them of his cleverness himself.’
Hastily, Lisle escorted him away before there was a scene.
‘Thank you for your help,’ said Ch
aloner. ‘When you began your analysis, Bristol had sheathed his sword but May was still armed. I am not sure if Holles would have been able to prevent him from stabbing me if you had not intervened.’
‘Would he have tried?’ Wiseman’s expression was sombre. ‘Holles, I mean. Have you asked yourself why he left you alone with Willys? And why May was rescued so long before you?’
Chaloner regarded him uneasily. ‘Holles means me no harm. We are on the same side.’
‘Are you sure about that? I am not saying Holles did put you in a dangerous situation deliberately, only that you should not dismiss the possibility.’
‘I shall bear it in mind,’ said Chaloner tiredly, thinking Surinam was looking increasingly attractive.
‘You were lucky I was to hand, actually: I had just received news that the King’s blockage has cleared without the need for surgical intervention and was about to leave. I am performing a Private Anatomy this afternoon, you see.’
‘There seem to be rather a lot of those these days.’
Wiseman grimaced. ‘Yes, but mine will show students how the bladder is connected to the kidneys, which is something they need to know for when they perform the operation you laymen call “cutting for the stone”. The one Johnson performed yesterday, however, was to amuse rich patrons.’
‘Which rich patrons?’
‘Buckingham and his entourage. Holles was there, too, incidentally. I glanced in on my way home, and saw him looking very green around the gills. Not everyone has the stomach for dissection.’
‘Who was the subject?’
Wiseman was startled by the question. ‘You mean the corpse? I have no idea. He would have been some felon, donated by the prisons, as usual. What an extraordinary thing to ask!’
‘Not so extraordinary. Do you know who was dissected for Temple’s edification? Webb, murdered while walking home from the Guinea Company dinner. He was no felon.’
‘You are mistaken,’ said Wiseman, regarding him in astonishment. Then his face resumed its customary arrogance. ‘Of course, cadavers change their appearance after death and laymen are easily confused. Johnson probably told Temple it was Webb, but it will have been a joke, although not one in particularly good taste.’
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