I nodded, though I did not entirely agree with him. Milcote saw this from Lord Clarendon’s perspective; and he himself had money in his purse; he was well-clad, well-shod and well-housed. But I could understand how the mansion’s stately magnificence must seem like a slap in the face to the crowd outside, many of whom had probably seen their own houses reduced to ashes in the fire. The Duke, for all his wealth and magnificence, knew how to make the common people love him.
‘Gorse is waiting for us in the pavilion,’ Milcote went on. ‘I thought it safer to keep him apart from the other servants so I set him to whitewashing the upper room, much against his will. He knows he must hold his tongue, but there’s no harm in making sure of it.’
By this time we were walking past the side of the house towards the garden. I heard a stir in the forecourt behind us, the sounds of shouts, hooves and carriage wheels.
‘That will be the Duke of York,’ Milcote said. ‘Another private conference with my lord.’
‘He’s often here?’
‘Of course. Their interests have so much in common. My lord is his father-in-law, after all, and the grandfather of his children.’
It was, I thought, a none too subtle reminder that Lord Clarendon had powerful allies, and even in his reduced state was not a man to be lightly offended. He was closely linked to the royal family. As the whole world knew, if the King should die, the Duke of York would inherit the crown, and Clarendon’s granddaughter, Princess Mary, would become the next heir presumptive to the throne.
We walked in silence for a moment, each wrapped in his own thoughts. There were men at work on the other side of the garden, but no one within fifty yards of us.
‘A word in your ear before we go in,’ I said. ‘You remember the suggestion you made to me yesterday?’
Milcote drew back, and there was a look of alarm on his face. ‘I spoke out of turn, sir … You must forgive me. Pray forget it.’
‘That’s what we can’t do,’ I said. ‘We have been commanded to put it into effect.’
He stopped abruptly and stared at me. ‘By whom?’
‘I’m not permitted to say.’
He let out his breath in a rush. He wasn’t a fool, and he must know that the King was at least aware of this, and that the Duke of York had probably had a hand in it. Perhaps that was why the Duke was here: to discuss the matter with his father-in-law.
‘Well, sir,’ he said. ‘That I did not expect.’
‘Nor I. But now we must think how best to do it.’
‘Perhaps the plan I outlined to you would answer?’
Both of us stopped, as if at a command.
‘Leaving the body in a pond near the Oxford Road?’ I seemed to have divided my mind into two: one part which was capable of planning the illegal disposal of a murdered man, and another which threw up its metaphorical hands in horror at the thought of what I had become and the dangers that lay before me. ‘It would answer very well.’
‘Tonight would be best – the sooner the better.’
‘How do we get him there?’
‘I’d thought to strap him on the back of a horse,’ Milcote said coolly, as if such thoughts came naturally to him. ‘A packhorse … Roll him up as if he were a bale of cloth. There’s a lane through the fields from here to the Oxford Road. It would be easier if there were three of us – one to lead the horse, one to walk on each side. Gorse, perhaps.’
‘The servant? Is that wise?’
‘Better him than bring in someone new. After all, he knows so much already – including where the body was found – that it may be best to have him with us. And he’s trustworthy.’
‘Everyone is,’ I said, ‘until they betray you.’
‘If he betrays us, he betrays himself as our accessory. He’s a sensible fellow. If we pay him well, he will keep his mouth closed. He’s good with horses, too.’
‘He mustn’t know my identity,’ I said. ‘Or who sent me.’
‘Very well,’ Milcote said. ‘I will talk to him privately about it today, after you’ve gone.’
I was still uneasy. ‘Even at night, someone may see us in Piccadilly.’
‘I’ve thought of that.’
Milcote explained that to the south-east of the garden were the stables, yards, orchards and kitchen gardens that belonged to the mansion. There was a gate, he said, that led from the Great Garden, where we were, into this utilitarian area of the domain. He would arrange with the steward that we should be allowed to and fro during the early hours, the dogs would be kept in, and the watchmen and patrols should be ordered to let us pass. It was not unusual, he said, for such orders to be given, for Lord Clarendon often had occasion to send people on private errands at nighttime. We would take the body on a barrow from the pavilion to the stables, where the horse would be waiting. From there we could slip out into the lane that ran north towards the Oxford Road and thereby avoid Piccadilly altogether.
‘Sword and pistol apiece for you and me, and a cudgel for Gorse,’ Milcote continued. He sounded more cheerful now that it was a matter of arranging the practical details of the body’s removal. ‘I know exactly where to go. I walked the lane yesterday evening to make sure it’s still passable. A little muddy in places, but nothing that matters. There’s a pond up there, set back from the Oxford Road. It will do admirably for our purpose.’
I admired his thoroughness. I had dealt with enough fools to appreciate someone who left as little to chance as possible. ‘What about his clothes?’
‘I’ll have Gorse dispose of them after you’ve talked to him. He can pull up the periwig from the well, too. Burn the lot if he can.’
‘And get rid of the sword.’
Milcote winced. ‘A Clemens Horn? Such a shame.’
‘Safer. Besides, it bears Alderley’s crest.’
We strolled on for a few paces. Then I touched his sleeve.
‘Will you tell my lord of this, sir?’
‘I must. He knows Alderley’s body is in the pavilion, and he will want to know.’ Milcote frowned, poking the toe of his shoe into the gravel of the path. ‘But perhaps it would be better if he learned of it after it was done.’
We exchanged glances, he and I, and I guessed that we were thinking along the same lines: that both of us took orders from people who preferred not to know precisely how their wishes were carried out, especially beforehand; that sometimes they preferred to hint at their desires to us rather than speak them plainly; and that in a manner of speaking we were their left hands, which operated in the dark, so their right hands might be seen to be spotlessly clean by the unforgiving light of day.
Matthew Gorse was a well-set-up fellow with a face full of freckles and no front teeth. We found him in the upper room of the pavilion. It was a lofty chamber, designed no doubt for entertaining, with tall windows on all sides.
He was at work with a tub of whitewash and a brush. He had already covered the length of one wall to the depth of a yard below the cornice. When we entered, he pulled off his hat and gave us each a nod, the nearest a man at the top of a ladder can manage to a bow. At a word from Milcote, he climbed down, propped the brush against the tub and wiped his hands with a rag. If he felt it below his dignity to be whitewashing a wall, as Milcote had hinted to me earlier, he gave no sign of it. But a good servant learned to hide his feelings.
Milcote took Gorse over what had happened yesterday morning when he discovered the body. The servant answered clearly and straightforwardly, and his account agreed in every particular with the one that Milcote had given me.
Meanwhile, I turned away and looked over the garden to the house. This side of the mansion was a perfect replica of the entrance front – the fifteen bays, the projecting side wings and the flight of stairs that swept up to the door. It was a statement about wealth and power as much as a house. But it failed to match its owner – old, lonely and gouty; sitting with his feet up in a small, warm closet full of books with his enemies baying at the gate.
‘Was there any
sign that someone might have broken in?’ Milcote was saying.
‘No, sir. Not a trace. The windows were secure, and so was the door to the roof.’
I crossed the room to the opposite wall, which looked north over the fields and orchards behind the house. Each of the two tall windows was divided by a mullion and a transom, and their two lower quarters were casements. Judging by the glass and the window furniture, they had formed part of the original pavilion, which Hakesby and his workmen were busy concealing beneath a skin of stone. I lifted the catch that secured the right-hand casement and pushed. It opened outwards.
‘Have you any further questions for Gorse, sir?’ Milcote asked me.
I turned to face them. ‘Not at present.’
There was a flicker of emotion on Milcote’s face. It might almost have been relief. ‘What now, sir?’ he asked.
‘May we inspect the kitchen again?’ I said. ‘It’s so easy to miss something.’
‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘One can never be too careful.’
It was almost midday when I left Clarendon House. In the forecourt, the Duke’s coach was waiting, and the horses were being walked up and down. His Highness had come with an escort, and the presence of soldiers must have intimidated the crowd of protesters, for they had melted away from the street outside.
Milcote accompanied me to the gate, and told the men there that I should automatically be admitted whenever I called. I declined his invitation to dine with him again and went out into Piccadilly.
I walked eastwards, in the general direction of St Giles and Holborn. Within a hundred yards or so, I turned left into a lane that followed the boundary wall of Lord Clarendon’s stables, orchards and kitchen gardens. Milcote was not the only one who liked to make sure of his ground.
The lane had been newly surfaced as far as the gate that led to the stable yard and the kitchens. After that, however, it narrowed to barely a cart’s width – less in places – and it was muddy from yesterday’s rain and hollowed into the ground by the passage of many feet over the years.
The wall gave place to a hedge. Cows had walked this way before me and left ample traces of their passage. I plodded onwards, cursing mechanically as some of the filth underfoot transferred itself to my shoes and stockings. Occasionally I caught glimpses of the tall chimneys of the house.
I came at last to a gate on the left-hand side. It led into a field set aside for pasture. Its left-hand boundary was formed by the high wall of Lord Clarendon’s Great Garden, with the pavilions at the corners.
Several dispirited-looking cows were huddled together in the corner under the shelter of a tree. No doubt these, too, belonged to Lord Clarendon. I opened the gate and walked along the line of the wall. The wall was topped with spikes. The gap in the centre, filled by a temporary but sturdy palisade, marked the place where the gates were to be installed in the garden’s northern wall. Here was the low wicket, which Milcote had said was occasionally used by gardeners and builders. I lifted the latch but the wicket, as I had expected, was barred on the other side. The grass in front of it was worn away.
The pavilion where Alderley’s body lay was at the far corner of the garden. Seen from the field, it revealed the secrets of its history more easily: the brickwork of the older building was clearly visible on this side. I ran my eyes up the walls until I reached the balustrade of the viewing platform on top of the pavilion. No attempt had yet been made to mask the old bricks with a modern stone facade to match the house. Only the cows could see it from the field, and the ground below had been churned up by their hooves.
I retraced my steps along the line of the wall, examining the ground as well as I could. A little over halfway, on the far side of the palisade, I found a footprint. Or – to be more precise – the partial print. The form was unmistakable but the detail was frustratingly sparse. I could not even deduce the size and overall shape of the footprint from the fragment; nor could I see traces of nails in the sole or other distinguishing marks.
A fragment of a footprint: nothing more. It could belong to the cowherd. It could belong to anyone.
I turned to go. I was deluding myself. What could I hope to learn from a muddy field?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I WALKED ACROSS the park to Whitehall. I had heard it said that the palace contained above two thousand rooms and was the largest in Europe. It was probably the ugliest and the most labyrinthine as well. Next door, to the north along the river towards Charing Cross and the Strand, lay the equally confusing courtyards of Scotland Yard. This was a more workaday place than Whitehall. It had its share of apartments and offices, but also sheds, coal stores, woodyards, stables and warehouses.
The office of the Gazette was in Scotland Yard. We conducted the routine business of producing the newspaper twice a week, in addition to the private newsletters that Williamson controlled, and the gathering of any intelligence he required.
The prison was also in Scotland Yard, a small two-storey building not far from Scotland Dock, where heavy goods were brought by river to Whitehall. Sometimes the authorities used the dock to land prisoners or to take them away, usually by night, as it was more private than the public Whitehall Stairs or the King’s Privy Stairs upstream.
The building had not always been a prison. It had been adapted for that purpose during the Commonwealth, when Oliver Cromwell lived in royal state at Whitehall, a king in all but name. It was used for short-term stays. Prisoners were held for questioning before they came to trial or were released. Usually they were under suspicion of committing treasonable offences. In the normal course of things such prisoners would be lodged in the Tower. But sometimes it was more convenient, and more private, for the authorities to keep them here for a few days while they were interrogated and where their friends found it harder to find them.
When I had dined, I walked into Scotland Yard and made my way to the prison. I showed my warrant to the plump sergeant who kept the place.
His eyes flickered over the scars on my face. ‘Who do you want, sir?’
‘His name’s Hakesby.’
‘Ah. The old trembler with the empty purse.’ The sergeant’s moonface split into a pink grin. ‘Where do you want him? Here or in his chamber?’
‘If he’s in a chamber by himself, I’ll see him there.’
‘Do you want a guard with you in case he’s troublesome?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’ll be as gentle as a lamb. Has he had any visitors?’
He consulted a ledger. ‘Only one. His clerk or servant. Scrawny fellow like a fox.’
‘Brennan by name?’
‘Yes, something like that – he brought him a couple of shirts and blankets, and some food. And a little money, but that’s gone.’
It wasn’t cheap to be a prisoner. If you wanted to be reasonably clothed, fed and housed in this place, you had to pay for it.
The sergeant waddled in front of me down the hall, jingling his keys. Hakesby was held on the ground floor in a cell barely large enough for a pallet bed, a single stool and a pot to piss in. Most of the cells held more than one prisoner. I doubted it was through kindness that he had been put in one by himself. More likely Brennan had paid for the privilege. Either that or it was a sign that Hakesby was considered too politically sensitive to mix with others.
When I came into the chamber, I found the old man sitting on the stool, leaning against the wall. He was trying to read his Bible by the light of a small barred window set high in the wall. It was not a cold day but he had a blanket around his shoulders.
He looked up as I entered. He was unshaven and dirty. His thin face was haggard, its bones and hollows newly prominent. He said nothing but lowered his eyes to his book.
How, I thought, could Cat possibly have betrothed herself to a man like this?
‘Talkative sort, ain’t he?’ the sergeant said. ‘Mind you, if you leave them long enough they usually start talking to themselves, which saves a man the trouble of asking questions.’ He threw back his head and l
aughed, sending a waft of stale, ale-scented breath into the air. ‘I’ll lock you in, sir, if you don’t mind. Bang on the door when you want to leave.’
I waited until the sound of his footsteps had receded down the passage. ‘I’m sorry to see you in this plight, sir,’ I said quietly.
‘Are you?’ Hakesby cried in a high, wavering voice. ‘Why should I believe that?’
‘Hush. There may be eavesdroppers.’ I took a step towards him. I was so close I could hear his breathing, which seemed unusually loud, as if there was some obstruction in his lungs. ‘Where’s Cat?’
‘I don’t know.’ This time his voice was a whisper. ‘Do you think I would tell you if I did?’
‘She stands accused of Edward Alderley’s murder,’ I said. ‘She’ll probably hang unless we can find a way to help her.’
‘She’s innocent of any crime.’
I was by no means as sure of that as he was. ‘Then we must find out who did it and, in the meantime, keep her safe. And I can’t do that without your help, sir.’
‘You bring her nothing but trouble, Marwood,’ Hakesby said. ‘You nearly got her killed a few months ago. The best thing you can do for her is leave her alone.’
‘The best thing I can do for her is find out who killed Alderley.’
‘Go away, Marwood. Go away.’
‘Do you want to have her death on your conscience?’ I snapped. ‘Do you? Do you?’
That got to him. ‘How can you say such a thing?’ He began to tremble, and for a moment I feared he would fall from his stool.
‘Soft,’ I said. ‘Keep your voice low, for God’s sake. I don’t know how much they’ve told you. Alderley was found drowned in the well in Clarendon’s pavilion early on Monday morning. The place was locked up as tight as a drum and no one had been there since Saturday evening. His hat and his sword were on the floor, and the well wasn’t covered over.’
‘It was when we left,’ Hakesby said suddenly. ‘I’d swear to that. I check the place before locking up. Always. In fact we haven’t had the well cover off since the beginning of last week.’
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