He looked relieved. ‘No news is good news. Thank you for your kindness, and for your help. My lord is most grateful, and so am I.’
It was a civil speech, so I bowed in return and said it was nothing. I did not add that I would not have helped him if Chiffinch hadn’t ordered it. Nor was I happy that my masters had obliged me to act illegally. But I liked Milcote, nevertheless. He struck me as a decent man, honourably loyal to his master, doing his best in a difficult situation.
‘Lord Clarendon has asked me to bring you to him. He’s on the terrace.’ He lowered his voice. ‘His gout’s bad today. He may be irritable.’
Rather than go round the outside of the house, he took me through it. For the first time I saw some of the state rooms in the central block of the building. They were as grand as the King’s and infinitely cleaner; they seemed as full of marble busts and columns as the entire city of ancient Rome.
We went out by a door in the centre of the house that led to a broad flagged terrace. It was separated from the garden by a stone balustrade ornamented with urns.
Lord Clarendon was sitting in a wheeled armchair, with his bandaged legs resting on a stool. He was reading a letter. The table at his elbow was piled with books and papers. We approached him but he raised a beringed hand, indicating that he wished us to wait. He kept us there, standing in silence, while he finished the letter and pencilled a few words on the bottom of it. He put it aside and nodded to us.
‘Marwood,’ he said as I bowed to him. ‘How kind of you to call on an old man.’ There was an edge of sarcasm to his tone. ‘George – I don’t need you at present. Only Marwood.’
Milcote looked disconcerted, but he bowed and withdrew. Clarendon watched him until he was out of earshot.
‘He tells me that the pair of you moved the problem elsewhere last night.’
‘Yes, my lord. With Gorse’s help.’
He winced, as if the gout had stabbed him unexpectedly. ‘The servant who found him? I hope he proves trustworthy. Has the body been discovered yet?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘And we still don’t know how Alderley came to be drowned in my wife’s well.’ Frowning, he peered up at me. ‘Unless you bring me further intelligence on that score?’
I had plenty of information about Alderley and his movements, but none of it made any sense. I said, ‘I’m not sure if this is germane to the matter, my lord, but I came across a footprint in the field beyond the pavilion. There are windows on the first floor – if one of them had been left ajar and a rope thrown down, it’s just possible that a man could have got into the pavilion after dark without going through the garden. And there’s also the wicket in the palisade in the back wall, though that’s barred on the inside.’
Clarendon wrinkled his nose as if at an unpleasant smell. ‘It seems far-fetched to me. And either of those would have needed an accomplice within, too.’
‘Then there is the matter of Mr Hakesby.’
‘My surveyor? The Duke tells me that he’s in custody at Scotland Yard. I can’t think why – he could have done nothing directly: he’s almost as frail in body as I am.’ He frowned. ‘Besides, what could his motive have been? He has been well paid for what he does. And I find it hard to believe him untrustworthy. My wife’s cousin recommended him to her, and he spoke very highly of him indeed. I’ve talked to him myself once or twice, and he seems a decent man, and one who knows his business.’
‘And this servant of his …? The woman.’ It would have looked suspicious if I had failed to mention Cat.
Clarendon seized on this. ‘Ah. That’s another matter. Alderley’s cousin, I understand from the Duke, and by all reports a most vicious, savage girl. Did you know that her real name is Lovett, and that her father was a Fifth Monarchist and a Regicide as well? I have it on good evidence that she hated her cousin and had already attacked him once before.’
‘I confess I find it hard to see how she could have managed it.’
‘She had access to the keys of the pavilion, because Hakesby had a set at his office. And she’s gone into hiding. If that’s not a confession of guilt, I don’t know what is. It all seems plain enough to me. Blood will out, Marwood, blood will out.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
He shot me an angry glance. ‘I want more than “Yes, my lord” from you. I want you to do something about it, and so does the Duke. This is a plot by my enemies – you may be sure of that. I suspect that they are using the Lovett woman as an instrument for their conspiracy against me. This is designed to do me harm.’ He beckoned me closer and whispered, though there was no one in earshot. ‘It is just possible that someone of my household is involved.’ He paused, and for an instant he looked not only frail but frightened. ‘I trust George Milcote as much as I trust any man, but he may have made an error, or been too trusting in his friendships. He brought Edward Alderley here, after all, and without that, none of this would have happened.’
‘Do you know when he first brought Alderley here?’
He gave me a sharp look. ‘Not long ago. Three or four weeks, perhaps. I believe they had some acquaintance before Alderley’s father was disgraced.’
In other words, I thought, about the time that Clarendon was forced to surrender the seals of the chancellor’s office, and his enemies began seriously to think of how to impeach him.
‘George is always too soft-hearted for his own good.’ He toyed with his pen. ‘I shall tell you something in confidence that I have told no one else, apart from Milcote and my son-in-law, the Duke.’ It was the fourth time this morning that he had found occasion to remind me that his son-in-law was the Duke of York, the King’s brother. ‘I discovered Alderley in my closet one day. Quite by himself. He said he had opened the wrong door by mistake and begged my pardon for his intrusion.’
‘But what was he doing in that wing at all, my lord? I thought that part of the house was devoted to your private quarters?’
‘George Milcote had brought him there to show him some of my pictures. I was out at the time, so there was no reason why he shouldn’t. But then George was called away, and he left Alderley here for a moment or two. I came back unexpectedly. Alderley said he was looking for the stairs.’
At first sight, there was nothing strange in the story. It was normal enough for a trusted senior member of a household to show his friends his employer’s collections.
‘I asked George later, and it was perfectly true,’ the old man went on. ‘Some household emergency, I believe, and he was delayed longer than he thought he would be.’
‘Was anything missing afterwards?’
‘An interesting question.’ Clarendon nodded. ‘I can’t find a small box which I kept in a drawer of my desk. It’s not much more than six inches wide, two inches high and four inches deep. It’s made of a hard wood but covered with silver.’
‘Do you think Alderley took it?’
‘Perhaps. I don’t know how long he had been in the closet. On the other hand, I hadn’t looked at the box for months. It’s possible that someone else took it beforehand, and Alderley was speaking the truth when he said that he had strayed into the room by accident.’ He made a dry, snorting sound that, after a second or two, I realized had something to do with laughter. ‘Or even that I mislaid it myself.’
I thought of the silver key on Alderley’s keyring. ‘Was it locked?’
‘Yes, but the key was with it. Have you searched Alderley’s lodgings?’
‘Yes, my lord. But I didn’t find anything like the box. What was inside?’
He looked away, into the garden. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just find me the guilty parties, Mr Marwood and, if you can, find me that box. But don’t open it. Do that for me, and I shall be in your debt. More to the point, so will the Duke.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
AFTER I LEFT Lord Clarendon, I didn’t look for Milcote. I went out into Piccadilly. A few people had gathered outside the gates, but they were silent. The man in the long brown coat wasn’t
one of them, and nor was his fat friend with the old cavalry sword.
I found a coach for hire. I told the driver to take me up to Holborn. I paid him off at the bridge and walked the rest of the way to Farrow Lane.
Gradually my nose grew accustomed to the stink of the tannery. At the shop, Bearwood and his wife were dealing with potential customers, two elderly ladies. They had their backs to the street. The apprentice was sawing industriously in the workshop behind them. There was no sign of the little boy. I slipped into the passage that led down the side of the house to the door of Alderley’s lodgings.
I pushed the key into the door and twisted it. It didn’t move.
Had someone changed the lock? Then a simpler explanation occurred to me. I reversed the direction of the turn. The lock moved smoothly into the jamb of the door.
In other words, someone had already unlocked the door. Chasing on the heels of that realization came the next: the someone in question was probably still inside.
I took out the key, as quietly as I could, and pocketed it. I wished that I had a better weapon than my stick.
Slowly I raised the latch. I pushed the door. It swung silently backwards on well-greased hinges.
I stepped inside. I stood in the flagged entry from which the staircase rose to Alderley’s apartments and listened to the sounds above. I heard slow, heavy footsteps marching to and fro. It was as if a man above were pacing the room, deep in thought.
There was nothing stealthy or secretive about the movements, which was odd. No one had a right to be up there, except perhaps myself.
Stick in hand, I climbed the stairs, tread by tread. Two of them creaked but, by the grace of God, the noises coincided with sounds upstairs. The intruder was pulling heavy objects across the floor. He was in the largest of the chambers, the one at the back of the house with the desk and the mutilated portrait of the woman who looked like Cat.
On the landing, I paused to listen. All the doors were ajar. Some of Alderley’s clothes were strewn across the floor. My mouth was dry, and I was beginning to regret my folly at coming here alone.
I toyed with the idea of running downstairs and ordering Bearwood and his apprentice to come with me. But that would alert the intruder to my presence. Besides, Bearwood was slow of apprehension and by the time I came back here with him, the man upstairs would be long gone. Then there was that most potent argument of all, the one that men use to justify their rashest and most stupid behaviour: I did not want to appear a coward to myself.
I abandoned subtlety. I raised the stick, charged down the landing and threw open the door. It collided against a fallen chair. I plunged into the room, waving the stick like a madman and bellowing like a bull. Two paces later, I stopped so suddenly that I almost fell over with my own momentum.
Bearwood’s boy was standing not three feet away. He was cowering from me. He wore a plumed hat which came down over his eyes and a pair of enormous riding boots. And he held a sword that was almost as tall as he was.
We stared at each other. I cleared my throat. ‘Put that down,’ I suggested as gently as I could. ‘The sword, I mean.’
The blade wobbled in the boy’s hand.
‘Put it down,’ I snapped. ‘On the floor.’
He crouched and laid the sword on the bare boards. The movement dislodged the hat, which fell off his head. He had a triangular face with a pointed chin below a shock of yellow curls. It was hard to imagine how his lumpen parents had come to produce him. Perhaps he was a changeling, left by the fairies in exchange for the real Bearwood child. In that case, the fairies had had the worse of the bargain.
I combed my memory for the name his father had used. ‘Hal.’
The lad took a step backwards as if retreating from a blow. He was still wearing the boots, which came up almost to his crotch, and he tripped and fell backwards on to the floor. He began to cry.
‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘I won’t harm you.’
I was looking about the room. The apartment had been untidy when I had last seen it. Now it was in chaos, with Alderley’s possessions on the floor and on tables and chairs, and the cupboards open and gaping empty.
‘Hal, did you do this? Throw everything about? Empty the cupboards? It wasn’t like this when I was here on Monday.’
‘No, master, I swear it, I never did anything, it was like this when I came, and all I did was try on the hat and pick up the sword …’
His voice trailed away. When I was downstairs, he had been clumping to and fro in those ridiculous boots and wearing that absurd hat; he had probably been waving the sword at imaginary enemies.
‘Then who did it?’
‘I think it was him, sir, Mr Alderley’s friend. The Bishop.’
‘Why do you think that?’
Hal wriggled. ‘Who else could it have been?’
I pressed him on this, sensing that he had been about to say more but had then decided better of it. I switched my approach: ‘And how did you get in?’
‘The door was unlocked, sir.’
‘And why are you here?’ I gestured towards the sword and the hat. ‘To play the fool?’
His face coloured, and I knew I had been cruel. ‘Mr Alderley owes me sixpence. And I thought, he might have left it for me somewhere, so there’d be no harm in having a look for it, I didn’t mean—’
‘Be quiet,’ I cut in. ‘Why does he owe you the money?’
‘Because I took a letter for him to the Bishop. He promised me sixpence when he next saw me. But I ain’t seen him since then.’
I hesitated, considering the matter. Hal took the opportunity to step out of the boots. His feet were bare, and very dirty.
‘When did Mr Alderley give you the letter for the Bishop?’
‘Last time I saw him, master. Saturday, about dinnertime.’
‘Where did he ask you to take it?’
‘Golden Ball, sir. Leadenhall Street.’
I didn’t know the place but it sounded like a tavern. ‘This Bishop,’ I said, jingling the change in my pocket. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Tall. Taller than you, sir, tall as that door, nearly. And he’s all bones. Wears a brown coat.’
‘A long one?’
Hal nodded.
This affair grew worse every minute. One of the men organizing the protesters outside Clarendon House was tall and thin. He wore a brown coat and carried a sword.
I tried to reconstruct the sequence of events during Alderley’s last few hours in Farrow Lane. On Friday evening, he had returned, drunk as a lord, with the Bishop. Mrs Bearwood had heard him call out something about Watford and Jerusalem. About midday on Saturday, Alderley had sent Hal with a letter to the Bishop in the Golden Ball. In the evening, Mrs Bearwood said he had left the house at about eight o’clock and that had been the last time she had seen him.
‘Did you hear either of them say anything about Jerusalem? Or Watford?’
‘Only on Friday night, when Mr Alderley was hanging out of that window.’ He hesitated. ‘Only it wasn’t Watford.’
‘Your mother said it was.’
‘Ma got it wrong.’ Hal sounded more confident than before. ‘She’s hard of hearing, and she doesn’t hear all of it or get it right. Besides, she was in the kitchen, but I was in the yard. I was nearer. And I could see him.’
‘Really?’ I said, trying not to sound too interested.
‘He leaned out of the window so far I thought he’d fall out. And he called down to the Bishop, promising to write it all down in the morning. In black and white, he said, signed and sealed. All about Jerusalem.’
‘What about Watford?’
‘Sounded more like Wallingford to me.’
The implication hit me at once. I stared at him. ‘Wallingford? Are you sure? Absolutely sure?’
Hal nodded. ‘Cross my heart, sir. That’s what he said. He said he’d send it over to Wallingford, and the Bishop says no, send it to the Ball by dinner time.’
‘What else? What else did he say?’
I pounced on Hal, giving him no warning, and seized his arms. ‘You saw the Bishop later, didn’t you?’ I gave him a shake, like a dog with a rat. ‘You saw him when he came again and searched this place?’
The boy’s face lost its colour. He opened his mouth to scream and I covered it with my hand.
‘Gently. Tell me the truth and no one will harm you.’
He whimpered and I released him. Had it come to this, I thought, that to make a living I must scare the life out of children?
‘He came on Monday evening, sir. No one else was here – they were all in the alehouse.’
‘Did he talk to you?’
Hal shook his head. His eyes seemed twice as large as before. ‘But he saw me looking down from my window. And he did this.’
He raised his forefinger to his lips. Then, still staring at me, he drew it across his neck.
Hold your tongue or I’ll cut your throat.
It was strangely sinister to see this: not so much the gestures as the look of terror on the boy’s face. I found a sixpence and dropped it into his hand.
‘If I find you’ve lied to me,’ I said, ‘I’ll see that you’re beaten harder than you’ve ever been beaten before.’
His fingers closed over the coin. ‘It’s no lie, master. It’s all true. I swear.’
I told him to leave me. Wallingford, I thought, not Watford, and the man in the long brown coat: if the boy really had spoken the truth, it changed everything, and changed it for the worse.
Hal ran down the stairs. He flung open the door to the passage and slammed it behind him.
Wallingford House, near Charing Cross and the Royal Mews: where the Duke of Buckingham lived in state when he was in London. Buckingham – Clarendon’s enemy, the man behind the crowd shouting at his gates in Piccadilly, one of the leaders of the movement to impeach the old chancellor in Parliament. And I had just learned that Buckingham’s man had been involved with Alderley and perhaps had had a hand in Alderley’s death as well. The Bishop connected them all.
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