The Cheapside Corpse

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘No one knows what happened,’ he said. ‘We just woke a few nights ago to see the place in flames. Poor Milbourn has not been seen since, so he must have been inside. Of course, I know who was responsible – Roundheads.’

  ‘Why them?’ asked Chaloner, a little defensively.

  ‘Because of that pamphlet about Mrs Cromwell. They would rather lynch the author, of course, but he is in hiding, so they picked on the printer instead.’

  Chaloner walked back to the Green Dragon in an anxious frame of mind. The Court & Kitchin had been published weeks ago, yet feelings still ran high, so what would happen if Randal did produce a sequel? Clearly, Thurloe was right to be concerned.

  When he reached the tavern, the dregs of his ale were where he had left them, so he sipped them while he perused the rest of Randal’s tirade. It was petty and spiteful, claiming that Cromwell would have been a glutton were it not for his wife’s sordid frugality and thrifty baseness, and that she was a hundred times fitter for a barn than a palace. She was accused of accepting bribes and the spoils of war, yet baulked at the cost of a personal carriage, so used ones confiscated from Royalists. Randal also scoffed that she sat by while custard was lobbed by guests at her daughter’s wedding, and that she kept three cows in St James’s Park so she would not have to pay for butter.

  Its sly poison made Chaloner determined to talk to its author, but although he waited in the Green Dragon all day, Randal did not appear. Exasperated, he abandoned his vigil, and decided to see what could be learned from DuPont’s lodgings in Bearbinder Lane instead. The Earl had ordered him to stay away from the place, but Chaloner needed clues if he was to get to the bottom of the Frenchman’s death. He had no choice but to take the risk.

  Outside, the sun bathed the city in the soft, gold light of a fine spring evening, and the scent of warm manure was in the air. As usual, Cheapside was busy, and Chaloner started uneasily when he passed St Mary le Bow and its bells began to chime, but then he relaxed. It was not the tenor tolling for a death, but all six bells beginning a series of sequences known as ‘change ringing’, which was becoming popular for weddings. The groom was waiting in the porch, and Chaloner hoped the lad’s pale, sweaty face derived from nerves, not the start of a fatal fever.

  Beyond the church was a commotion, and he approached to see two houses with red crosses on their doors and watchers stationed outside. Small crowds had gathered around each, calling encouragement to the people who leaned out of the upstairs windows. Every so often, someone would dart forward for mischief, and the spectators would hoot and jeer when the watcher was obliged to chase them back.

  ‘My boy has a griping in the guts,’ shouted an angry man from one house. ‘We should not be locked in. We are bakers – our business will be ruined if we are gone for forty days.’

  ‘The searcher said it was plague,’ countered the watcher, fingering his sword uneasily. ‘And Mr Williamson gave orders that—’

  ‘And my baby is only teething,’ interrupted a woman from next door. ‘Look!’

  She brandished the hapless tot out of the window. He howled in lusty alarm, and it was clear that there was very little wrong with him.

  ‘Plague rages in the homes of the rich, though,’ yelled a spectator. It was the loutish Oxley, and while he spoke, his daughter was busily picking the pocket of the man next to her, while his son lobbed pebbles at the watchers. ‘Yet they are not locked away.’

  ‘Do you mean Essex House?’ asked one watcher. ‘Because that was spotted fever.’

  ‘It was the plague,’ countered Oxley. ‘And two victims are already in their graves.’

  The watchers tried to deny it, but Oxley overrode them with a lot of bombast that had the crowd bawling indignant agreement. Then reinforcements arrived in the form of Williamson’s soldiers. The mood of the onlookers grew uglier, and the situation might have turned violent had Baron and his trainband not appeared. A few sharp words from the King of Cheapside sent most of the protesters slinking away, while Oxley was taken to one side, and whatever was murmured in his ear had him nodding sullen acquiescence.

  Chaloner walked on, and saw a number of residents scrubbing the ground outside their houses, while more of Williamson’s men supervised. Others set about lighting bonfires that filled the street with a thick white haze. He reached Bearbinder Lane, and this time there was no watcher to prevent people from using it. Brewer Farrow, who never seemed to do anything other than loiter around being a malcontent, saw him eyeing it warily.

  ‘It is safe now,’ he declared. ‘Mother Sage just has dropsy – the searcher said so.’

  ‘Are you happy with her verdict?’ asked Chaloner. ‘Bearing in mind that if she was bribed to lie, your whole family might catch a terrible disease?’

  ‘She was not bribed – it is the truth,’ said Farrow crossly. ‘There is no plague here.’

  ‘Then what about DuPont and the Howards? DuPont was diagnosed by a physician, while no other sickness is likely to have killed seventeen people in so short a space of time.’

  ‘Those are isolated cases. The danger is past.’ Farrow smirked. ‘The Spymaster would love to close off Cheapside as he did this lane, given that his searchers have shut up more than three houses there, but he cannot – he does not have enough soldiers to patrol all the ways in and out.’

  ‘Then God help us all,’ said Chaloner soberly, appalled that such a grave situation should be seen in terms of a battle of wills with Williamson.

  He pushed past the brewer and entered Bearbinder Lane. It was narrow, mean and squalid, and its towering tenements were so close together that they met overhead. It was also deserted, and he strongly suspected that its residents had fled before the authorities could change their minds and close it again. Eventually, he identified DuPont’s house – it was the one next to Howard’s. However, while the milliner’s home had been carefully boarded up, nothing had been done to DuPont’s. He could only suppose that, as it was one of Baron’s ‘lucrative concerns’, the felon had arranged for it to be left alone. Between it and the Howard home was a hanging sign with a childishly depicted picture of an eagle, and Chaloner had the sudden melancholy thought that the youthful artist was probably one of the dead.

  He looked around carefully to ensure no one was looking, then picked DuPont’s lock. It was easier than it should have been, and he was inside in a trice. He closed the door behind him, then listened intently for any indication that the house was still occupied, although his catarrh-blocked ears rendered the exercise somewhat futile.

  He began to explore. Each room had been stripped bare, and nothing but the odd scrap of food or crumpled piece of paper showed that anyone had ever lived there. He did not blame the occupants for leaving, but sincerely hoped they had not taken the disease with them.

  He had just reached the third floor when he saw a shadow on the landing below: someone was coming up the stairs towards him. He hid behind a door, and the moment a head poked around it, he pounced, to find himself holding a puny child whose age was impossible to guess. The lad was uncommunicative at first, then became cheerfully garrulous when Chaloner gave him a ribbon he had in his pocket. His name was Noll, and he had known that someone had broken in, because there was a damp footprint on the doorstep. He had come to find out why.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Chaloner was more inclined to ask questions than answer them.

  ‘Gone away,’ chirruped Noll. ‘Except the landlord, who is probably upstairs. They ran off after DuPont died, but the landlord can’t disappear, because he runs this house for Mr Baron. Mr Baron don’t like folk disappearing on him, see.’

  ‘What can you tell me about DuPont?’

  ‘He was foreign and spoke funny, but only some of the time. He sounded like us when he was drunk. I didn’t like him much. He was oily, like old grease, and he was always surrounded by girls. He liked cockfighting and cards.’

  Chaloner thought about the messages he had found in Long Acre. ‘Did his father live here?’


  Noll regarded him askance. ‘Course not! DuPont was French, so his sire will be in France. It stands to reason, see.’ He looked pleased with himself for his incisive logic.

  ‘Then is there anyone else he might have called father?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Noll brightly. ‘Top floor.’

  ‘The landlord?’

  Noll nodded. ‘Mr Fatherton. His curbers call him Father.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘Curbers. You know: a curb is a hook, and curbers use hooks to pull stuff through other people’s windows.’ Chaloner must have continued to look blank, because the lad added with some asperity, ‘Thieves. Father tells them where and when to work, and they give everything they get to Mr Baron, who is in charge of this area.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Chaloner. ‘I heard that DuPont was a criminal.’

  ‘Like you and me,’ said Noll with a wink, a misunderstanding that explained his willingness to chat. ‘You are a napper – although not a very good one, or you would have picked a better place than this to rob – and I am a nip. Everyone else who lived here was a curber.’

  Chaloner did not know what a nip did, but guessed it was something to do with filching purses – the boy had the sharp, darting mien of the professional pickpocket. He thought again about the notes he had found in Long Acre, and the knowledge that Fatherton told his felons where and when to strike, along with the sign hanging outside, allowed him to make sense of them at last. Indeed, the explanation was so obvious that he was disgusted he had not seen it sooner.

  ‘“Ten the sun in wood”,’ he recited. ‘It means that DuPont had to be at the Sign of the Sun in Wood Street at ten o’clock, while “three swan in bread” means a house by the Sign of the Swan in Bread Street should be raided at three o’clock.’

  The notes were not coded messages from Dutch intelligencers to their spymasters, and he felt a small glow of satisfaction that his scepticism on that front had been justified.

  ‘That sounds right.’ Noll beamed happily. ‘Ten and three are times when owners tend to be asleep, and the house by the Sun on Wood Street is an especially nice one. The curbers did that a couple of weeks ago, and got some lovely stuff.’

  ‘Onions at the Well. Does that mean anything to you?’

  Noll’s small face creased into a frown of concentration, but then he shook his head. ‘There are no onions or wells around here. That is not one of Mr Fatherton’s instructions.’

  Chaloner climbed to the top floor, the boy chattering at his heels. He knocked, but there was no reply, so he tried the door. It was unlocked and swung open to reveal yet another abandoned room, only this one had a body in the middle. Chaloner approached and turned it over carefully with his foot. It was the man who had sneezed over him in Coo’s house.

  ‘Mr Fatherton!’ exclaimed Noll. ‘No wonder no one has seen him today!’

  Stomach churning, Chaloner looked for plague tokens, and was relieved to find none. The cause of death was obvious, however: Fatherton had been shot in the head.

  Chaloner sent Noll to fetch a constable, then stared at the body. Why had Fatherton been killed? Because he knew something about DuPont that the culprit wanted kept quiet, perhaps something involving the plague? Or was the disease irrelevant, and the reason revolved around the way DuPont had made his living, either his work as a spy or a criminal?

  Chaloner knelt to inspect the fatal wound. It was unusually small, even for a handgun, and he had seen another just like it three days ago – on Coo. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. If the physician and Fatherton had been killed with the same weapon, then it was likely that they had been shot by the same assailant. Until then, he had been inclined to view Coo’s death as separate from the peculiar circumstances surrounding DuPont’s final hours, but now he was not so sure.

  He began to search the Frenchman’s rooms, hurrying to finish before Noll returned with help. There were two chambers. The first was spacious, but completely empty. The second was a pantry containing a table, a stool, and a shelf on which rested a threadbare blanket and a sack of dried peas. A smattering of rat droppings lay on the bag, old and grey, which led Chaloner to surmise that it had not been opened in some time. Then he reconsidered: the sack looked slightly newer than the scats …

  He emptied it on the floor, wincing when a spring trap dropped out that would certainly have broken his fingers. Right at the bottom was a package. He unwrapped it carefully. It contained promissory notes from several different bankers – promissory notes were issued to people who deposited money, and were thus a kind of receipt. The ones in his hands were made out to Robert Howard, and represented a fortune.

  Clearly, DuPont had ‘curbed’ them from the Howard house next door – one of Fatherton’s letters had read the eagle in bear twelve, meaning that the house at the Sign of the Eagle in Bearbinder Street was to be raided at midnight – but why had he kept them? They were no good to anyone, as they could only be redeemed by Howard himself – bankers remembered who deposited large sums of money, so even talented imposters were unlikely to succeed in using promissory notes to make withdrawals.

  Chaloner was still pondering his discovery when he heard a creak on the stairs. He shoved the notes in his pocket, and called out a greeting, assuming it was Noll with the constable. But he was answered only by silence. Suspicious, he drew a knife and slipped behind the door to wait. Nothing happened, and he was beginning to wonder whether he had imagined the sound when the door flew inwards with such force that he suffered a painful crack on the nose and was fortunate not to stab himself.

  While he reeled, a man darted in, and although Chaloner’s eyes were watering furiously, instinct warned him that the fellow had a gun. He threw himself to one side just as the weapon discharged with an almighty bang that deprived him of his hearing completely. As he lay on the floor, he was vaguely aware of the door being slammed.

  He staggered to his feet, still deaf, and coughed as the acrid stench of smoke seared his nostrils. What was burning? The house or one of the government’s anti-plague bonfires? He staggered to the door, only to find it blocked from the outside, and it was several minutes before he managed to prise it open – at which point he discovered that the hall outside was well and truly ablaze. He closed it quickly and hurried to the window. It had been nailed shut. He glanced back at the door, and saw smoke begin to ooze under it.

  Chaloner had been in many desperate situations during his career in espionage, but this was one of the more serious. Yet he had been trained to think rationally in dire circumstances, and he was soon reviewing his predicament dispassionately. He grabbed the stool from the pantry, smashed it against the wall, and used a leg to lever away first one window slat and then another until he had opened a hole large enough to lean through.

  Far below was a dingy yard, shared with the Howard house. It contained a pig, which was trotting around in agitation, frightened by the crackle of flames. Smoke poured from each of the four floors beneath Chaloner’s, showing that fires had been set there, too – and the tenement was old, made of wood, and tinder-dry. There was no question that it would quickly become an inferno, and might even spread to the neighbouring properties and beyond.

  He coughed again as fumes belched upwards. The door was already smouldering, and it would not be long before it burned through completely, at which point the fire, greedy for air, would explode into the room like a bomb. He needed to get out fast. He ran back to the pantry, snatched the blanket from the shelf, and sliced it into shreds with his knife. Then he began knotting them together, acutely aware that the door was charring at an alarmingly rapid rate. His hearing cleared just enough to let him detect the sinister roar of flames on the other side. He was going to be too late!

  He dragged the table to the window, then tied one end of his blanket-rope around it before tossing the rest over the sill. It snaked downwards, but his eyes were streaming far too much to tell if it was long enough. He squeezed through the hole after it, and took a firm hold. It stretched alarmin
gly when he put his weight on it, and he dropped several sickening feet when the table flipped upwards before becoming jammed against the shutter.

  Flames spurted through the window, and he knew there was no time to hesitate. He descended hand over hand as fast as he could, past the fourth floor, the third, the second. Then his rope burned through, sending him plummeting downwards in a shower of sparks.

  He might have been seriously injured, but there was a compost heap below, which broke his fall. Even so, he landed hard enough to jolt the leg that had been injured by an exploding cannon during the wars. He lay there, pain washing over him, then forced himself to roll away when the remnants of the shutter began to drop. They missed him by inches. He scrambled upright and hobbled to the far side of the yard, trying not to trip over the terrified pig.

  The yard had two doors. One led to DuPont’s house, which was belching flames and was clearly not an option for escape. The other was Howard’s, which had been barred from the inside. More burning wreckage hurtled down, and a quick glance told him that DuPont’s building was on the brink of collapse, at which point he would be buried under hot rubble.

  He could see the bar through a gap in Howard’s door, so he took his sword and began to lever it upwards. His first attempt failed and so did his second. More smouldering timber fell, and the pig battered his legs, squealing its distress. Stoically, he ignored it all. His third try had the bar dropping away, and he flung the door open in relief.

  The pig was through it first, and as it seemed to know where it was going, Chaloner followed it along a dirty corridor to another door – not the front one, which had been nailed shut by the authorities, but one at the side of the house. The animal turned and regarded him beseechingly, so he unfastened the latch. Out went the pig, along a narrow alley, and suddenly they were on Cheapside. The pig trotted away without a backwards glance.

  Almost being incinerated had not been a pleasant experience, and Chaloner’s knees were rubbery as he peered around the corner at a gathering ring of spectators – fires were one of London’s greatest hazards and they always attracted attention. His lame leg throbbed, his throat was raw, his eyes stung, he still could not hear properly and his nose was sore from its encounter with the door. He wanted to go home and lie down, but whoever had set the fire was almost certainly watching, and Chaloner wanted answers. He forced himself to mingle.