B004BDOJZ4 EBOK

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘You are housed in luxury here, but Fanning was not. Why? Did your master pay him less?’

  ‘Our master did not pay him at all – I did. I could not kill Webb on my own, so I enlisted the help of a trusted friend. So, now you have an answer to one of your two questions.’

  Chaloner did not think so. ‘You and Fanning may have been the means by which Webb was killed, but you have not told me who ordered his death.’

  ‘You will find out at my “hanging” tomorrow, when my master shows his hand. And in reply to your second query, the answer is no: Webb’s murder was nothing to do with the Castle Plot.’

  ‘Was Sarsfeild involved?’

  ‘You said two questions, but I feel like talking, so you are in luck. Sarsfeild had nothing to do with killing Webb – I have no idea who he was. He said he was a confectioner, so God knows how he came to be on Bristol’s list. Fanning and I killed Webb; Sarsfeild is unjustly convicted.’

  ‘Was Sarsfeild part of the Castle Plot?’

  ‘I answered that query when you came the first time; if he was, then I never met him.’

  ‘You had already answered my questions about Webb, too, but now you have changed your mind.’

  Dillon clapped his hands in delight. ‘You do not know whether to believe me! So, I shall have to prove to you that I was instrumental in ending Webb’s miserable life. Have you seen his body? If so, you will have noticed deep grazes on his knees. They came when Fanning stabbed him and he stumbled forward. I could not know about such wounds, if I had not been there, could I?’

  There had been scratches, Chaloner recalled, and Dillon was right: it was a detail only the killers would know. He glanced at the door, seeing shadows move under the crack at the bottom. Had the guard reported the presence of an unknown vicar, and he and his colleagues were massing for an arrest? He turned back to the gloating face in front of him, hurrying to finish and be gone before he ended up in some filthy hole, to be strangled like Fanning and Sarsfeild.

  ‘Did you kill Webb’s coachman, too, and hide his body in his own room?’

  Dillon grinned in a way that made Chaloner wonder whether he was entirely sane. ‘Fanning did. We needed Webb on foot if we were to kill him on The Strand. It was all a bit of a rush, but we managed. However, Fanning’s nerves have since proved weak, and my master left him to stew a little too long – long enough that he asked May to stage a rescue with poisoned wine. I told him my master had the matter in hand, but he did not share my faith. And he was ready to bleat about what we had done. I imagine that was why he was killed.’

  ‘And you think the same may happen to you, if you start revealing secrets,’ surmised Chaloner. For the first time, he saw a crack in Dillon’s armour: he was afraid of the man he expected to save him. ‘Then why are you talking to me, when you need your master’s help more urgently than ever?’

  ‘Because I admire Thurloe’s constancy. He deserves answers.’

  ‘Then give me just one more: who sent you to Ireland?’

  Dillon’s smile faded. Again, he glanced at the door, to ensure no one was listening, and lowered his voice. ‘No one. I went of my own volition, taking Fitz-Simons, Fanning and others with me. I do not approve of what is happening there – families deprived of land they won or bought honestly. I believed in the rebellion, but had the sense to abandon it once I saw it had been infiltrated by spies like you.’

  Chaloner raised his eyebrows. ‘You confess to treachery? Here, of all places?’

  Dillon shrugged. ‘Who heard me? You will say nothing, because your family has been victimised by greedy Royalists, too. Your heart was never in thwarting the Castle Plot – I could see it in your eyes.’

  Chaloner sincerely hoped no one else had. ‘You are lucky to be alive. The other rebels were rounded up, and most are either hanged or in prison.’

  Dillon laughed as he gestured around him. ‘And my situation is different how, exactly? Will you come to see the fun tomorrow morning? You will not be disappointed.’

  Chaloner did not leave Newgate as quickly as he would have liked, because inmates saw his clerical garb and asked for his prayers. He obliged, because he had no choice if he wanted to maintain his disguise, but it was a distasteful deception, and when he was finally out into the fresh air, he thought he might be sick. He ripped off the dark clothes and hurled them at the first beggar he saw, ignoring the man’s startled gratitude in his desperation to be away from the prison and its environs. His legs shook horribly, so he hired a carriage to take him to Tower Street.

  The Dolphin was a rambling inn, which tended to be frequented by officials of the Navy Office. Chaloner saw one called Samuel Pepys, whom he had met briefly a few months before. A spark of recognition flashed in the clerk’s eyes, but Chaloner was obviously not considered sufficiently important – or useful – to warrant an exchange of civilities, and was pointedly ignored.

  The Dolphin’s landlord remembered Willys and Dillon on the night of Webb’s murder, because Willys had been a belligerent drunk who had broken a window. He also recalled Dillon receiving a note and disappearing for several hours – the incident had stuck in his mind because he had been afraid Willys would wake up and cause chaos when his companion was not there to calm him. Chaloner listened to the innkeeper and his regulars for a long time, learning a great deal not only about the night in question, but their views on the certainty of Dillon’s rescue, Lady Castlemaine’s latest pregnancy, and the Bishop of London’s distress over a lost parrot. More pieces of the mystery slotted together, and he finally began to see the answers to at least some of his questions.

  ‘There is one other thing,’ said the landlord, catching his arm as he was about to leave. ‘Dillon’s message was delivered by a slovenly, grubby fellow – the kind who always happens to be to hand when someone wants something shady done. Then a second man came, also wanting to speak urgently to Dillon, but Dillon had already left.’

  ‘What did the second man look like?’

  ‘Better dressed than the first, but it was busy that night, and my memory is … oh, yes, sir. Another shilling might help me remember. He was big, I know that, and he had thick fair hair. And he was a foreigner, judging by the way he spoke.’

  Chaloner left as the sun was setting in a great orange ball, and travelled by water from Botolph’s Wharf to Whitefriars Stairs. At that time of day, when the streets were clogged with the carts of traders, all flooding home from their stalls, shops and markets, it was always quicker to go by boat. The sun danced across the filthy water, turning it to a sheet of shimmering gold, and it was almost peaceful, with commerce stopped and the city’s clamour quietened by approaching night. Gulls glided above his head, and the sky was full of red and purple clouds. He smiled when he disembarked and saw a familiar face in the crowd that was out enjoying the warmth of the evening. It was Temperance’s Maude, a basket of brown onions over her arm.

  ‘Bristol is coming tonight,’ she explained, accepting Chaloner’s offer to carry it for her.

  ‘That is a fine brooch you are wearing,’ he said, thinking it sat oddly with her functional workaday clothes. It would look more at home with the brothel-master’s costume she would probably don later.

  She fingered it, but without pleasure. ‘Johan Behn gave it to me, but he was only after my body.’

  Chaloner raised his eyebrows. ‘Eaffrey and Silence are not enough for him?’

  ‘Eaffrey! A slip of a girl with no meat on her bones. Johan likes his women with a decent pair of hips, although I think Silence has the edge over me there. She can keep him, though.’

  ‘I thought you liked him.’

  ‘I did – when I thought he considered me something special. Then I learned he is carrying on with Silence and several others. Like all men, he is just out for what he can get, and his whispered endearments were a sham. Still, at least our affair was one where he gave me gifts, not the other way around. Silence parted with her husband’s ship as a token of her affection.’ She spat in disgust, narr
owly missing the onions.

  ‘I am surprised he has time for all this courting. He is a busy merchant.’

  ‘Men can always spare an hour for their pleasure. But I have been thinking about Johan since I was made aware of his loose morals. He says he grieves for Webb, but I know for a fact that he does not. The morning after the murder, I heard him tell an associate that it was good riddance.’

  ‘Which associate? Temple?’

  ‘No, a low, villainous fellow with black hair and a strange purple birth-stain on his left arm. I would recognise him if I saw him again.’

  ‘Fanning,’ said Chaloner immediately. ‘He had black hair and a mark on his hand.’

  ‘You mean one of the men who was convicted of murdering Webb? How odd! Well, anyway, after this Fanning had left, Johan pulled his pipe from his pocket, and a bundle of letters dropped to the floor. I picked them up for him – I thought they might be love letters, as they were penned in pretty blue ink, and I wanted to catch him out if they were – but they were in a strange language.’

  ‘German,’ said Chaloner. ‘His native tongue.’

  ‘Does German use numbers for letters, then?’ asked Maude curiously. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Numbers?’ asked Chaloner sharply. He rummaged in an inner pocket for a cipher code Lord Clarendon had once given him. ‘Do you mean like this?’

  She grinned. ‘Exactly like that. German, is it? Well, I never!’

  When Chaloner reached home, he half expected Scot to be waiting, but the stairs were deserted. A smattering of crumbs told him someone had lingered there, though, and had fortified himself while he did so. Chaloner bent to inspect the mess. He had eaten enough cookshop wares to know three things. First, these crumbs came from a lamb pie. Secondly, lamb pies always contained a generous helping of peas. And thirdly, both Scot and Leybourn hated peas, so would never have bought one.

  So, who had lurked on the stairs in the darkness, waiting for him to return? Chaloner sensed it was no one who wished him well, and spent the rest of the night wide awake, waiting for an attack that never came.

  In the faint light of pre-dawn, Chaloner went to Lincoln’s Inn, where he found Thurloe standing forlornly among his felled trees – almost half gone already. Leybourn was with him, a comforting hand on his shoulder. The mighty oaks had been carted off to the shipyards, while the fruit trees lay on their sides, waiting to be chopped into logs for the winter. The garden had an oddly lopsided feel to it, and the absence of vegetation along one wall showed it to be in urgent need of repair. Prynne had evidently been unaware that not only had the ancient roots and branches concealed unsightly masonry, but they been critical in shoring up some of the more unstable sections, too.

  ‘Thank you for the note you sent last night, Thomas,’ said Thurloe. He looked miserable. ‘But I am afraid all your efforts to help Dillon have been in vain. I was up until the small hours, trying to think of a way to save him, but I failed. He will have to rely on his new master for salvation after all.’

  Chaloner had not imagined for a moment that Thurloe would succeed in rescuing his former spy, but he admired him for trying. Prudently, Chaloner’s note had neglected to include the fact that Dillon had actually confessed to the crime – it was not the sort of thing that should be entrusted to paper. He had planned to tell Thurloe that morning, but the ex-Spymaster seemed so disconsolate about the destruction of his beloved sanctuary that Chaloner could not bring himself to do it.

  ‘That will be expensive to mend,’ he remarked instead, nodding towards the wall. ‘And it cannot be left as it is, because it looks as though it is in imminent danger of collapse. Prynne may find he has no money left to destroy the rest of the orchard, once funds have been diverted to make good this mess.’

  Thurloe gazed at him, then turned to study the walls. Slowly, a smile lit his unhappy face. A plan was beginning to take shape. ‘Do you own any skill with gunpowder, Thomas?’

  Chaloner knew exactly what he had in mind. ‘A little. Do you know where I might find some?’

  ‘It is not the sort of thing an ex-Spymaster keeps in his chambers, for obvious reasons. However, Prynne used some to clear the well a few days ago. I suspect he has a bit left. It will be in his room.’

  Leybourn looked from one to the other uneasily. ‘You are going to blow up Lincoln’s Inn?’

  ‘Only enough to ensure Prynne will have to pay for some urgent repairs,’ said Thurloe. His face was uncharacteristically vengeful. ‘Then he may not have enough money left to hire men with axes.’

  Chaloner and Leybourn followed him to the building – already called the Garden Court in anticipation of the splendid views it would enjoy once the trees had gone – where Prynne lived. Leybourn was appalled by their plan, and tried to make them reconsider. They would be caught, he hissed, and made to pay for the damage themselves – or worse. Thurloe informed him curtly that he had no intention of being caught.

  Prynne was at dawn prayers, and the Garden Court was deserted as Thurloe led the way to his colleague’s quarters and cautiously picked the lock. Then Chaloner searched for gunpowder, while Thurloe kept guard and Leybourn prowled. The surveyor stopped at a desk covered with documents, all filled with Prynne’s tiny, crabbed writing. He snorted with disgust as he picked one up and read it.

  ‘I wish we could put a fuse to this inflammatory rubbish, too. I did not know men still existed who wrote about matters of which they are entirely ignorant, not in these enlightened times.’

  ‘Why would you think that?’ asked Chaloner, opening a chest. ‘You publish government pamphlets, for God’s sake. Ah, here is the powder. We had better not take too much. There is no point in adding insult to injury by leaving evidence to show we used his own explosives to thwart him.’

  While Chaloner scooped the odorous black substance into his hat – it was the only receptacle available to him – Leybourn busied himself among the flasks, decanters and bottles on Prynne’s shelves. Chaloner recalled Yates mentioning that there were an inordinate number of them, and Prynne was their prime suspect for trying to poison Thurloe. He heard the clink of glass as stoppers were removed, and sharp intakes of breath as Leybourn sniffed the contents. He concentrated on what he was doing, ladling faster when he thought he heard footsteps in the courtyard below.

  Eventually, he had enough to accomplish what he needed to do, but Prynne’s supply was too obviously depleted. Swearing under his breath, he replaced what he had taken with soot from the chimney. But then he saw that the dust was a different colour from the explosive, so he was obliged to mix it in. Stirring gunpowder was not something that could be rushed, and he was acutely aware that the whole operation was taking far too long. After what felt an age, he finished, and looked up to see Leybourn in the process of drinking something dark red.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he exclaimed, aghast. ‘You know he keeps poisons here.’

  ‘None of these are poisonous,’ said Leybourn, grinning in a way that indicated he had taken his experiment rather too far. ‘They are all wine. Most labels say otherwise, but I know a decent claret when I taste it. Prynne is a secret drinker, with a palate for vintages that would impress a king.’

  He upended a decanter and drained it before Chaloner could stop him. Horrified, the spy grabbed his arm and pulled him outside. Leybourn staggered, and it was not easy to drag him in the direction they needed to go. He began to warble, a tuneless, reedy tenor that reminded Chaloner why he always fabricated an excuse for not accompanying him on the viol.

  ‘What is wrong with him?’ asked Thurloe, as they hurried away from the Garden Court.

  ‘He has discovered that your colleague’s collection of liquids is nothing more dangerous than wine. Prynne is innocent of attempting to poison you, it seems.’

  ‘Yates told me—’ began Thurloe. He stopped, and his eyes narrowed. ‘I had a letter yesterday from my old manservant, begging me to take him back. He is under the impression that I dismissed him, while I was told he had left because he
was ill. Someone is causing mischief.’

  ‘It must be Yates,’ said Chaloner. ‘There he is – you can ask him.’

  Leybourn reeled drunkenly, and Chaloner was hard-pressed to hold him upright and keep the contents of his hat from spilling at the same time. He cursed the splint that made him clumsy, and decided the dressing would come off that day, no matter what else happened. And if Lisle could not do it, then he would borrow Thurloe’s gun and hold it to Wiseman’s head until the surgeon had removed every last shred of the damned thing.

  ‘Mr Thurloe,’ said Yates with an uneasy smile as the ex-Spymaster bore down on him. Thurloe’s blue eyes were hard and cold, an expression that had set more than one Royalist spy trembling in his boots during the Commonwealth. ‘Can I fetch you anything from the kitchen?’

  ‘Who hired you?’ demanded Thurloe. He grabbed Yates by the collar when the porter tried to make a run for it, displaying surprising speed and strength for a man who so seldom engaged in any kind of physical activity.

  Yates licked dry lips, one frightened eye on Thurloe and the other one on Chaloner. ‘I do not know what you are talking about.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do,’ said Thurloe in a low, sibilant voice that was distinctly sinister. Yates paled. ‘You have been spying on me ever since you arrived, and I know it was you who sent my servant away under false pretences. Now, are you going to be cooperative, or shall we do this another way?’

  Yates struggled, but the ex-Spymaster’s grip was powerful, and it was not long before he abandoned himself to his fate. ‘I have done nothing wrong. I only did what I was told.’

  ‘By Temple,’ said Chaloner to Thurloe. ‘He knows you are taking more tonics than usual at the moment – I heard him tell Bristol about it. And Temple knows because Yates briefed him.’

  ‘There is nothing wrong in reporting that,’ bleated Yates. ‘It is hardly a state secret.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Thurloe in the same soft whisper. It was making Chaloner uncomfortable, so he did not like to imagine how Yates felt. ‘But that is not all you did. You doctored my tonics – it must have been you, because you are the only person who has had access to them since my own servant left. I might have died, had not the cat stolen some first. It is still poorly, and I am fond of that animal.’