‘Stand behind the curtain,’ he ordered. ‘I cannot afford to be caught consorting with you, especially today, with the conference looming. So stay hidden until I tell you to come out.’
‘Downing is being blackmailed because he has submitted fraudulent expense claims to the government,’ said Chaloner quickly. ‘If you need to disconcert him, mention them.’
There was no time for further explanations, because Downing was outside, and Chaloner had only just stepped behind the draperies when the envoy marched in. He sported a spectacularly bruised eye from the scuffle in Fleet Street.
‘What happened to you?’ asked the Earl, eyeing him with dislike. ‘Been brawling?’
‘Chaloner attacked me,’ claimed Downing, raising a tentative hand to touch it. ‘He is a vicious brute, and I recommend extreme caution when dealing with him.’
‘You no doubt deserved it,’ said the Earl coldly. ‘But what do you want? I am busy. Can you not do your business with my secretary?’
‘I thought it best to see you in person,’ said Downing, equally frosty. ‘And do not look at me with distaste, My Lord. I am not the one who harbours criminals – betrayers of King and country.’
‘I am not harbouring anyone,’ asserted Clarendon, somewhat furtively. ‘Search my rooms if—’
‘I have searched them,’ interrupted Downing curtly. ‘Chaloner has been hiding somewhere these last few days, so I have been through your offices and your home.’
Clarendon was purple with rage and indignation. ‘You impudent upstart! You have no right—’
‘I have every right! I am looking for a dangerous traitor,’ snarled Downing. ‘So do not presume to tell me my business, My Lord Chancellor.’
‘Chaloner is not a traitor, and nor is he Falcon,’ the Earl snapped back. ‘You know it, and so does anyone with a modicum of intelligence. He was not even in the country when Falcon was arrested. Your campaign against him is petty and sly, and tells everyone that your success during the Commonwealth was due to his superior skills.’
Behind the curtain, Chaloner was astonished. He had never expected to hear such an endorsement of support from a man who had never made any attempt to conceal his dislike of him.
Downing did not grace the outburst with a reply. ‘I did not come here to argue,’ he said haughtily. ‘I came to reason. Do you know where he is? Your enemies will have nothing with which to accuse you, if you are the one who gives him up.’
Chaloner held his breath: his master had a strong sense of self-preservation.
‘Do not attempt to coerce me,’ shouted the Earl, outraged. ‘Catch him yourself. Or are you saying he is cleverer than you, Williamson and the entire intelligence service combined?’
‘No!’ barked Downing. ‘But he will make a mistake soon, and then we shall have him. I thought he would have fled to Thurloe, but Thurloe is away and no one knows where. Meanwhile, I have questioned his other friends, including the brothel-keeper in Hercules’ Pillars Alley and your secretary, but they know nothing. Damned simpletons!’
‘What brothel-keeper?’ asked the Earl, shocked.
Downing’s smile was malicious. ‘You do not know the kind of company he keeps?’
Fortunately for Chaloner, the Earl did not believe him. ‘He has done nothing wrong. Unlike you, it seems. You may as well know now that I have decided to audit your expense accounts.’
Downing paled. ‘Why?’
‘Because I have reason to believe you are cheating the government.’
‘No!’ cried Downing. ‘You have no proof. And if Chaloner has given you the papers he stole from my home, then they are forgeries. He wrote them himself !’
‘Well, which is it?’ demanded Clarendon archly. ‘Did he steal them or fabricate them? He cannot have done both, and you contradict yourself in your oily efforts to extricate.’
Downing stared at him, then became greasier than ever. ‘You understand how these things are, My Lord. Mistakes in accounting happen, and I cannot be responsible for the carelessness of my clerks. I can explain everything.’
‘Oh, you will,’ said Clarendon softly. ‘To an investigating committee.’
Downing stared at him for a moment longer, then turned on his heel and stalked out, slamming the door behind him.
‘That shut him up,’ said the Earl gleefully. ‘And he is clearly guilty. What has he done, exactly?’
Chaloner told him all he knew, hoping it would go some way to protecting his master against Downing, because he was beginning to fear that he would not be in a position to do it himself.
It was not easy leaving White Hall, because Williamson’s soldiers were everywhere, scanning the faces of servants and courtiers alike as they passed through the gates. Chaloner managed eventually, but two followed him out. He itched to run, but sixty-year-old merchants did not sprint, and it would have shattered his disguise for certain. He thought he had lost the pair as he crossed the busy expanse of Charing Cross, but when he reached The Strand and glanced behind him, they were still there.
He escaped them in St Martin-in-the-Fields, which was busy because prayers were being said for cooler weather. Then he hurried to Fleet Street, and breathed a sigh of relief when White’s door was answered by an elderly housekeeper. Filmy blue eyes indicated she was virtually blind, but she smiled when he asked to speak to the vicar.
‘I recognise your voice! You married Mrs Cotton recently. I remember, because it was the day my master had that vile message that warned him against his good works.’
‘Is he in?’ Chaloner had no idea what she was talking about, but it was no time for idle stories.
‘What really upset him was that a man was murdered to see it delivered,’ she went on as if he had not spoken. ‘Stabbed in the back, and the missive pinned to him. During a wedding!’
Chaloner stared at her: he had all but forgotten the hapless Philip Alden. ‘The note advising someone not to interfere was aimed at White? What was he doing to warrant such a message?’
‘Fighting evil,’ replied the housekeeper promptly. ‘And someone did not like it.’
Chaloner continued to stare. Was Alden’s murder Falcon’s work? Falcon had cursed Compton, but such tactics would not work on a devout cleric like White, so had he resorted to crude threats instead? But what was White not to interfere with? The Sinon Plot? Chaloner stepped inside the house, determined that the vicar would give him answers before anyone else lost their lives.
‘Where is he?’ he demanded.
‘Dead, sir.’ Tears slid down the old woman’s leathery cheeks. ‘He passed away on Friday night at his sister’s home in Chelsey. We brought him home, and he is to be buried today. That is why it is raining – God is weeping for the death of a good man.’
Chaloner slumped against the wall, shocked and sorry. ‘What killed him?’
‘A fever. He was well one moment, and gone the next. Would you like to see him? He is on display, and several of his parishioners have already been to pay their respects.’
Chaloner closed his eyes as guilt flooded through him. He had let Compton down, failed to do the one thing he had asked. If only he had managed to catch White’s name! Full of self-recrimination, he followed the housekeeper into a parlour, and looked inside the coffin.
White had been dressed in a smart long-coat, with a fresh falling band and white gloves to match. Chaloner frowned. The gloves were the same as the ones Compton had worn, and the same as the pair in Molins’s pile of discarded clothes. He had been told that both were gifts from Hanse.
‘Will you fetch Surgeon Wiseman?’ he asked, as questions and answers began to rattle around in his mind in equal measure. ‘He will want to pay his respects. Tell him Tom wants him to come.’
While he waited for the surgeon to arrive, he tried to inspect the body, but did not know how to find what he was looking for, and chafed impatiently until Wiseman marched into the room a short while later. The surgeon dropped to his knees and began to pray. Touched by his piety, the housekee
per withdrew. Wiseman leapt to his feet the moment the door was closed, eyebrows raised.
‘Examine his hands,’ ordered Chaloner urgently.
Wiseman blinked. ‘Why?’
‘Because Hanse gave gloves to Molins and Compton, and now we discover that White had some, too. I suspect they have been treated with poison. I wonder whether Talbot Edwards was sent any.’
‘Talbot Edwards is not dead. I saw him this morning.’
‘He is a sweaty man, and it is hot for gloves – perhaps he has not worn them yet. But Compton and Molins have. And van Goch’s physician told me that the substance that killed Hanse and Oetje was not administered in anything swallowed. He thought it might have been introduced by means of a sharp object, but some toxins can be absorbed through the skin …’
Wiseman began a detailed and, to Chaloner’s agitated mind, aggravatingly time-consuming examination. It involved inspecting White’s throat, removing clothes to look for marks, and examining hands and gloves with a magnifying glass. It felt like an age before he had finished.
‘You are right,’ he said eventually. ‘White has been poisoned, and the gloves are responsible. Can you see this stain by the seam? It is where powder or liquid has been pressed into the material. It has a rank stench, and is almost certainly deadly.’
‘Deadly enough to kill?’
‘Perhaps, although do not forget that the victims would have removed the gloves to eat or drink, leaving residues on their fingers. The poison could have gone into their bodies that way, also.’
‘How long would it take to have an effect?’
‘I will have to perform experiments to tell you that. However, there are potions that can lay a man low, then let him rally before killing him. That must have been what happened to Compton – he was ill, felt better, and finally succumbed. No wonder I misdiagnosed!’
‘But the process was inevitable, once started?’
‘Yes, if the source of the trouble was not removed. Of course, one symptom may have been cold hands, leading the victim to reach for his gloves, thus perpetuating the cycle.’
‘We need to recover the ones from Molins and Compton,’ said Chaloner. He was aware of the despair in his voice – he could not track down dead men’s clothes, elude the grasp of everyone who thought he was a spy and thwart Falcon. ‘No one else must put them on.’
‘I will do it,’ offered Wiseman. ‘They are proof of my innocence, so you can trust me to succeed. Does it mean Hanse is the killer? The wretched things were gifts from him, after all.’
‘Hanse cannot be the culprit for three reasons. First, he was poisoned, too – and perhaps he was stripped of his clothes to allow the real killer to reclaim the garments that brought about his death. Second, he would not have sent gloves to his friends—’
‘You sound very sure.’
‘I am sure. He was in the habit of giving gifts, but only stockings – someone else sent the gloves in his name. And third, he had received a pair himself. He wore them the night we met in the Sun. How could I have sat with him all that time, oblivious to the fact that he was being murdered?’
‘Because you had no reason to suspect it. Had he complained of—’
‘He mentioned pains in his stomach,’ said Chaloner bitterly. ‘And now I know why.’
‘I was going to say that had he complained of irritated skin or swollen fingers, then it might have been different. But I saw no damage to his hands. Or to White’s, Molins’s or Compton’s, for that matter. You could not have known.’
Chaloner was not so sure, and knew his lack of care would plague him for a long time to come.
‘Swan and Swallow were probably poisoned, too,’ Wiseman went on, placing White’s gloves in a bag for safekeeping. ‘It would explain why they were compliant when they were doused in oil and set alight – they were incapable of doing anything but scream.’
Chaloner thought about it. ‘In other words, they were burned to eliminate evidence that they had swallowed a toxin. But why bother? Any fool could see they had been murdered.’
‘The answer is obvious,’ said Wiseman disdainfully. ‘We have been looking for a man who kills by setting his victims alight, and it has not occurred to us that we may be hunting a poisoner. It was a ruse, to throw investigators off the real trail.’
‘The real trail,’ muttered Chaloner. ‘God only knows what that is. But we know that Falcon killed Swan and Swallow, so perhaps the gloves are proof that he dispatched Hanse, Molins, Compton and White, too. The connecting factor is poison.’
Wiseman grimaced his disgust. ‘It is a ruthless way to kill, regardless. The man is deranged!’
Chaloner agreed. ‘The Privy Council – and possibly Williamson, too – believe his sole intention was to steal the crown jewels. But Compton and Edwards thought he wanted the treasure to finance something more significant. Meanwhile, the landlord of the Devil heard them mention a spy—’
Wiseman looked bemused. ‘Falcon is an intelligencer? Whose? Ours or the Dutch?’
‘Both and neither. No one understands why the negotiations are not working. We should have had a treaty long before now, but there is suspicion and mistrust on both sides—’
‘And the moment progress is made, a rumour starts to circulate, which sets it back again,’ nodded Wiseman. ‘It is Falcon, keeping us and the Dutch in a state of unease. But why?’
Chaloner shrugged. ‘Perhaps because he can. You look disbelieving, but he has held two nations at each other’s throats for months. Such power must be intoxicating. And addictive.’
Wiseman shook his head in incomprehension. ‘What will you do now?’
‘Find Talbot Edwards and force him to tell me what he knows about the Sinon Plot.’
Leaving Wiseman to explain to the housekeeper why they had tampered with her master’s body, Chaloner left White’s house. The ruffians from the gangs were everywhere as he flagged down a hackney carriage and ordered the driver to take him to the Tower, although whether Williamson’s or Downing’s was impossible to tell. Two watched him as he climbed into the coach, but neither followed, and he was soon rattling down Ludgate Hill to cross the Fleet River.
Once across the fetid, evil-smelling stream, there was a problem, because the cobbles on the other side of the valley had been rendered slick by drizzle, and several vehicles had slithered out of control to cause a blockage. Chaloner itched to burst out of the coach and run, but it would demolish his disguise for certain, so he forced himself to stay. Chafing impotently, he willed the traffic to ease, but it took an age, and the clocks were striking ten by the time he reached his destination.
Then there was another delay, because the yeomen were at their Sunday devotions, and the one who eventually answered his insistent hammering was not pleased to have been dragged away. He conducted Chaloner to Edward’s lodgings with ill grace, although his jaw dropped in horror when they arrived: the Assistant Keeper was lying on his bed clutching his stomach, his face as white as snow. A hat and a pair of gloves had been tossed on to a nearby chair.
‘Fetch Surgeon Wiseman,’ Chaloner ordered the yeoman. ‘He will know what to do.’
‘What is wrong with me?’ gasped Edwards when the soldier had gone. His weak eyes were watering, so his cheeks were wet with tears. ‘I was well this morning, but now I feel dreadful.’
‘White was murdered on Friday night.’ Chaloner was sorry to be brutal to an ailing man, but there was no time for niceties. ‘Like Hanse, Compton, Molins and now you, he was poisoned by a pair of gloves – which were not from Hanse, but from Falcon. It is time to tell me what is going on.’
‘No!’ whispered Edwards, glancing towards the offending items in horror. ‘I cannot …’
‘Then you will die, too,’ said Chaloner harshly. ‘If not today, then later, when Falcon will avenge himself on you for what you have done to thwart him already.’
‘I will stop him,’ declared Edwards unconvincingly. ‘It is why we came together in the first place. Compton overheard hi
m plotting, and he told three men he trusted – Molins, White and me. And we included Hanse, because of what Falcon did.’
‘He circulated rumours to impede the peace talks,’ said Chaloner, watching surprise light Edwards’s face that he should know. ‘You needed Hanse to repair the damage from the Dutch side.’
‘Our strategy was working! Then Compton had a brilliant idea: to tell Williamson that Falcon planned to steal the crown jewels. Falcon could not play his evil games in prison. But he escaped …’
‘Are you saying Falcon is innocent of plotting to steal the regalia?’
‘Oh, no! He intended to have it sure enough. He was outraged when Williamson ordered his capture, and he cursed Compton … but you know all this.’
Chaloner was struggling to understand. ‘Did you tell Williamson that Falcon was doing a lot more than plotting to make off with a few baubles?’
Edwards was ill enough to overlook the slight to the treasure in his care. ‘We did not dare! It would have unleashed even more suspicion and mistrust than ever.’
‘He is the Spymaster,’ said Chaloner, disgusted. ‘He is paid to handle this kind of business.’
‘But his intelligencers are next to worthless,’ whispered Edwards in despair. ‘They are corrupt, too – anyone can buy them for a few pounds. And this is too sensitive a matter to be left to chance. We decided it was better to tackle it ourselves.’
‘Your arrogance has allowed Falcon to inflict all manner of damage on the negotiations.’
‘I suppose he has proved too wily for us,’ admitted Edwards tearfully. ‘When he was arrested, he accused Swan and Swallow of giving him up, although they did nothing of the kind …’
‘What a moment,’ said Chaloner uneasily. ‘You let Williamson incarcerate Swan and Swallow in the same cell as a man who thought they had betrayed him?’
Edwards closed his eyes. ‘I know we bear some responsibility for their fate, but it was necessary – as long as he blamed Swan and Swallow, he would not think others were working to foil him. The means really did justify the end, and Swan and Swallow were hardly angels.’
The Body in the Thames: Chaloner's Sixth Exploit in Restoration London (Exploits of Thomas Chaloner) Page 34