The Cheapside Corpse

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘Oh,’ said Shaw, frowning. ‘Are you sure? Only she told us that they earned you a fortune.’

  ‘Did she?’ Chaloner was unimpressed that she should have fabricated such a tale. ‘Well, I am afraid it is untrue. They belong to the Crown.’

  ‘No matter,’ said Shaw with a benign smile, giving Chaloner the distinct impression that they did not believe him. ‘I am sure she will bring us our money soon.’

  ‘My mother used alum to reduce her freckles,’ confided Lettice. ‘It is a very useful mineral. But do come and see our shop, Mr Chaloner. You will not be disappointed.’

  Chaloner wanted to resume his monitoring of the bankers, but felt it would be churlish to refuse the invitation under the circumstances. And it took no more than a glance to realise that the shop’s shabby exterior concealed a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of riches. Not only did it have seven or eight very fine viols, a large display of lutes and three virginals, but it sold sheet music by all his favourite composers, including some he had never seen before. He scarcely knew where to look first, and his investigations flew from his mind.

  ‘You will have to excuse the smell,’ said Shaw, although Chaloner had been so enraptured that he had barely noticed the aroma of sewage that pervaded the place.

  ‘Our neighbour’s cesspit has overflowed into our cellar,’ explained Lettice.

  Chaloner would not have cared if they had been standing knee-deep in ordure, because he had found a fantasia by Dowland, and was playing it in his mind.

  Scenting a possible sale, Shaw took a lute and strummed the first few phrases, indicating with a nod that Chaloner was to pick an instrument and join in. Chaloner selected a bass viol, and joy surged through him as he bowed the first notes he had played in weeks. Lettice leaned over his shoulder and began to sing, although he would have enjoyed her performance more if she had not filled the rests with sniggers. Even so, time passed quickly, and Chaloner was shocked when he heard the Bow Bells chiming for the four o’clock service.

  ‘Please stay,’ begged Lettice, as he stood to leave. ‘We have much more to show you. For example, have you heard of Dietrich Buxtehude? He is young, but will be famous one day.’

  Chaloner was sorely tempted, but duty called. ‘I have to visit Dr Coo.’

  ‘He lives five doors along,’ supplied Shaw, his harsh features softening. ‘When I had a fever last winter, he tended me like a son. He is a true saint.’

  It was the second time Chaloner had heard the physician so described.

  There was a large sign depicting a bull swinging above the entrance to Coo’s home, but Chaloner would have recognised it as belonging to a medicus anyway. The door was carved with an image of Aesculapius, the Roman god of healing, complete with serpent-entwined staff, and the place oozed the sharp, clean scent of herbs. The door was open, so he stepped inside.

  ‘I will not be a moment,’ called a voice from within. ‘Please take a seat.’

  A low murmur of voices suggested that Coo was with a patient, so Chaloner perched on a bench and thought about the music he had just played. Notes and melodies drifted through his mind, and he was so lost in them that the client leaving Coo’s surgery stumbled over his outstretched legs. Chaloner shot upright to catch him. The fellow promptly closed his eyes, gulped in a breath and held it for so long that Chaloner wondered if he should summon help. Then he sneezed, right into Chaloner’s face.

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered with a wet sniff. Another sneeze followed, along with an unpleasant snorting sound, after which he shuffled out. Chaloner wiped his own face dry with his sleeve.

  ‘I apologise for the wait,’ said a tall, thin man with a large bald head. ‘Will you come in?’

  Chaloner rarely took an instant liking to people, as a life in espionage had taught him that this was unwise, but he experienced an immediate partiality for Abner Coo. The surgery was a warm, comfortable place, and exuded the sense that here was somewhere a person could feel safe – as opposed to the lairs of most medici, which tended to reek of urine and blood, and made no bones about the fact that terrible things happened in them.

  ‘How may I help you?’ asked Coo, waving Chaloner to a chair before taking the one next to it. This was also in marked contrast to other physicians, who preferred their victims squatting submissively before them on low stools, or better yet, prostrate.

  ‘Your last patient sneezed on me,’ said Chaloner, voicing what was uppermost in his mind.

  ‘The rogue! I told him to wear a scarf. I suppose you are worried about the plague? Many folk are, but I tell them the tale of poor Dick Wheler, who was more frightened of it than the lung-rot that was killing him. But in the end neither claimed his life – he fell victim to an assassin’s blade, and all his apprehension was for nothing. Such is life.’

  ‘I do not suppose you know the assassin’s name, do you?’ asked Chaloner hopefully.

  Coo shook his head. ‘Spymaster Williamson tried to find out, but with no success.’

  ‘The Earl of Clarendon has asked me to investigate Georges DuPont’s death,’ said Chaloner, unreasonably disappointed that a solution for Wheler’s murder was not to be had so easily. ‘And I am told that you tended him before he died. Is it true?’

  Coo sighed and rubbed his eyes. ‘I wondered how long it would be before an envoy from the government arrived. I am afraid that DuPont died of the plague.’

  Chaloner stared at him. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. I have never seen a clearer case: swellings in the armpits and groin, high fever, mottled skin, and death within hours.’

  Chaloner edged away. ‘And you tended him? I thought that anyone in contact with a victim was to be sealed up for forty days.’

  ‘That does not apply to me, because I am immune,’ explained the physician. He saw Chaloner’s scepticism. ‘I was in Venice during the last outbreak, and I stayed in the hospital the entire time. I never became ill, despite physicking hundreds of sufferers.’

  Chaloner wondered if he was immune, too, because he had tended his dying family, then looked after servants and neighbours. Nine people had breathed their last in his arms, but he had not suffered so much as a sniffle. ‘Is that possible?’

  Coo shrugged. ‘How else can you explain my continued good health in that place of death? But I have a theory about the plague: it is not propagated by a miasma, which is the current thinking on the matter, but spread by worms so small that they cannot be seen with the naked eye.’

  That notion sent a chill down Chaloner’s spine. How could people fight something they could not see? At least a miasma was visible, especially at night when it rose through the ground as a mist, stealing into houses, shops and churches. Coo’s theory was so unsettling that he did not want to dwell on it, and returned to its victim instead.

  ‘I am told that DuPont became ill in Long Acre, but died in Bearbinder Lane. It is a distance of a mile and a half. Do you know if he walked or had some kind of transport?’

  ‘He walked – and might have infected dozens as he went. But God was watching over us that day, because the disease remains confined to St Giles.’

  ‘Why did he make such a journey, knowing the risk he posed to others? Or did he not understand what was wrong with him?’

  ‘He was perfectly lucid when I broke the news. I left to fetch him some medicine, but he had gone by the time I returned. I was summoned to Bearbinder Lane a few hours later, but the disease was in its final stages and there was nothing more I could do. He died soon after my arrival.’

  ‘Did you seal up the houses he was in?’

  ‘There was no point. They were tenements, and people came and went from both the whole time I was there – it would have been like trying to block the flow of the Thames. I did not attempt what would have been both futile and impossible.’

  Chaloner was seriously unsettled. Coo should have notified the authorities at once, and keeping the news until ‘an envoy from the government’ came to question him had been unforgivably reckless. He said so.<
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  ‘Why?’ asked Coo with quiet reason. ‘Could you shut every house and shop that DuPont walked by? Identify every person he might have passed? No, of course not. And as I told you, the disease is confined to the purlieus of St Giles—’

  ‘But it will not stay confined if infected people wander around the city,’ Chaloner pointed out. ‘You have seen what it can do – you do not need me to remind you of the dangers.’

  ‘No,’ acknowledged Coo. ‘But Cheapside heaves with unrest at the moment, because of the greed of the goldsmith–bankers who live here, and slapping quarantines on it will do nothing to soothe the situation. I do not want riots and mayhem if they can be avoided.’

  Chaloner itched to remark that riots and mayhem were preferable to an epidemic that would kill everyone, but why bother when the deed was done? ‘What else do you know about DuPont?’

  Coo shrugged. ‘Very little. I am told he was French, but I could not place his accent. He was not wealthy, or he would not have been in those particular tenements, although he did mention the possibility of earning a lot of money in the future.’

  From the Earl, surmised Chaloner. ‘Did you know that he was a spy?’

  Coo blinked. ‘Was he? There was—’

  He was interrupted by a knock on the door. He excused himself and went to answer, but the moment he pulled it open, there was a sharp report and a thud. Chaloner was on his feet with a knife in his hand almost without conscious thought. Two masked men stood on the doorstep, and Coo lay in front of them, eyes open but sightless. One held a still-smoking handgun – an elaborate piece with an intricately engraved barrel and an ivory butt. The killer wagged it at Chaloner tauntingly, almost as if daring him to notice what a fine weapon it was.

  Chaloner lunged at him with the knife. The gunman hissed his alarm and shied away, but his companion was made of sterner stuff. He also had a firearm, although it was an ancient thing, quite unlike the elegant affair held by the first. There was a flash, a ringing crack and then nothing.

  Chapter 2

  Chaloner had no idea how long he lay sprawled on Coo’s floor, although he sensed it was no more than a few moments. He became aware of a buzz of excited conversation, and opened his eyes to see a number of silhouettes looming over him. All jerked back in alarm when he moved, clearly having thought him dead. There was a persistent ringing in his ears, and the bright flash of the discharge still marred his vision, no matter how many times he blinked.

  He sat up and removed his hat to discover the metal marred by a dent. Fortunately, the old gun had not been very powerful – or perhaps its owner had been niggardly with the powder – so although the impact had stunned him, it had done him no serious harm. Gradually, his senses returned to normal, and he saw that Shaw and Lettice were among the horrified onlookers.

  ‘We thought you were dead,’ Shaw murmured, helping Chaloner to his feet. ‘Which would have been a pity. Not only would it be a waste of a decent violist, but it would be unseemly to ask a new-made widow for forty pounds.’

  Lettice giggled, although Chaloner suspected it was more to conceal her embarrassment than because she had found the remark amusing.

  ‘We heard two sharp cracks from our shop,’ she explained. ‘I thought it was gunfire…’

  ‘But I told her that was impossible,’ finished Shaw. ‘Not in broad daylight on Cheapside. This is London, not the United Provinces. What happened?’

  Before Chaloner could reply, others hastened to relate what they had seen. Backwell was first. He was standing with Taylor and Joan, and Chaloner supposed they would have had a clear view of events, given that they had been in the tavern directly opposite.

  ‘After the shots, I saw two men running away,’ Backwell said. ‘One was waving a gun, which was rash – most killers would have hidden it. They disappeared up Milk Street.’

  ‘Roundheads,’ added Joan. Up close, her face was pinched and sour, and her tiny pointed teeth and small pink nose were definitely redolent of a ferret. ‘Troublemakers, like all their breed.’

  ‘You were one once,’ Backwell reminded her. ‘As was I.’

  ‘But I was not,’ put in Taylor haughtily. Chaloner had sensed the power of the man from a distance, but close up it was almost overwhelming, and he noticed people were careful not to stand too close. ‘I was always a Royalist.’

  ‘I was led astray by my first husband,’ averred Joan. ‘But he is dead, and now there is no more loyal servant of the Crown than I.’

  ‘She has changed her tune,’ murmured Shaw in Chaloner’s ear. ‘And I know why: she is afraid the King will use her former loyalties as an excuse to demand a donation for the war, as he has all the other financiers who once loved Cromwell.’

  ‘Which is probably why she married Mr Taylor’s son with such unseemly haste,’ put in Lettice. ‘Wheler left her fabulously wealthy, and she does not want to lose it to a money-hungry monarch. As Mr Taylor was a Royalist, the King leaves him and his riches alone.’

  ‘Who would want to harm Dr Coo?’ asked a man whose clothes identified him as a brewer, although not one who earned a very good living. ‘He was a gentle man.’

  ‘He was indeed, Farrow,’ sighed Backwell. ‘He will be missed among the poor – he treated them for free.’

  ‘I advised him against that,’ said Taylor. His eyes were hard, like brown buttons, and there was no kindness in the handsome face. He looked, Chaloner thought, exactly like the kind of man who would turn others’ misfortunes into profit for himself. ‘It was asking to be abused by lazy beggars who cannot be bothered to work.’

  ‘No beggar killed Coo,’ stated a laundress angrily. ‘A banker did, jealous of his popularity.’

  ‘Who cares about popularity?’ shrugged Taylor. ‘Especially from paupers. I would rather have the money they owe than their love.’

  ‘We know,’ said Farrow sullenly. ‘That greedy rogue Wheler stole my brewery, and now I am forced to borrow from you to—’

  ‘This is not the place to discuss such matters,’ interrupted Backwell sharply. ‘Not with Coo lying dead in front of us. Now, first things first. Is there any money in his pockets?’

  ‘Money?’ blurted Chaloner, startled by the question, especially after the curt reprimand that had been snapped at Farrow.

  ‘Coins,’ elaborated the banker, and his eyes took on an acquisitive gleam. ‘Pounds, shillings and pence. Cash. Currency. Legal tender. Lucre. Specie.’

  Chaloner was not the only one who grimaced his distaste when Backwell knelt next to Coo and began to rifle through the physician’s clothes. Three shillings and sixpence were found, which Backwell held up reverently, like a clergyman with the Host.

  ‘I shall keep them safe until his next of kin comes to claim them,’ he said, placing them in the purse he wore around his neck; it was already bulging. ‘Now we can discuss his murder. Who were those two men?’

  ‘I could not tell – they were wearing masks.’ Taylor addressed Backwell arrogantly, as if no one else was there. ‘But I wager anything you like that they were minions of Baron. We all know that he is not beneath murder if it suits him. He sent these men to dispatch Coo.’

  ‘But Coo physicks his trainband,’ said Backwell doubtfully. ‘I doubt he—’

  ‘Trainband!’ spat Taylor contemptuously. ‘His men are not a company of militia organised to rally in the event of trouble, but a gang – a rabble of thieves, robbers, cut-throats and felons.’

  A wave of resentment rippled through the onlookers, making Chaloner suspect that some might be trainband members themselves. He glanced at them. There were one or two merchants among the throng, but most were either obviously impecunious or were like Farrow – people who struggled to make an honest living, and who were compelled to borrow to make ends meet.

  ‘Regardless, Coo tended them when they were hurt or ill,’ Backwell was telling Taylor. ‘So Baron has no reason to harm him.’

  ‘Then I suppose the murder will remain a mystery,’ said Joan with callous indifference. ‘
Now, let us all be about our own business. Shaw will not mind seeing to Coo. He is no longer a goldsmith, so he can have nothing better to do.’

  She turned on her heel and flounced back to the tavern. Taylor followed, although not before he had taken the opportunity to run his eyes over the spectators, giving the impression that he was looking for debtors; Farrow was suddenly nowhere to be seen. Chaloner watched Taylor go, wondering whether to run after him to discuss the murdered Wheler – not to mention Hannah’s debt – but decided it was hardly the best time.

  ‘I cannot abide that Joan,’ muttered the laundress. ‘She was a greedy vixen when she was wed to Wheler, and marrying into the Taylor clan has made her worse than ever.’

  There was a murmur of agreement, followed by a lot of vicious remarks about goldsmith–bankers in general. Chaloner turned back to the Shaws, but they had been cornered by Backwell, much to their obvious consternation.

  ‘My outing,’ Backwell was saying, blithely oblivious to the unfriendly mood of the onlookers. Personally, Chaloner thought he was reckless to stay there alone. ‘I have planned a meal of anchovies, followed by shopping. What time will you and Lettice arrive?’

  ‘Seven,’ replied Lettice, although her husband had opened his mouth to decline. Chaloner did not blame him: the excursion sounded dreadful.

  ‘Good,’ beamed Backwell. ‘It will be a celebration, as the King has just appointed me to oversee the finances for the Dutch war. I am delighted! There is nothing nicer than counting money and my new duties will involve a lot of it. I shall not only buy arms, ammunition and naval supplies, but see to the sailors’ pay. All those little packets of coins! What could be more fun?’

  ‘Music,’ said Lettice firmly. ‘Or listening to birdsong.’

  ‘And cockroach racing,’ added Shaw. Chaloner had no idea if he was serious.

  But Backwell was warming to his theme and did not hear. ‘Coins deserve to be handled by someone who loves them, which is why I became a banker, of course. Nothing gives me more pleasure than money – the feel of it in my hands, its delicious scent, the way it glitters.’