A Murder on London Bridge (23 page)

‘He must be pleased.’

‘Delighted,’ agreed Leigh. ‘But I have been busy. The Dowager is buying up all the supplies of oysters – not for her ball, but because she wants to make sure none are available for the prelates.’

‘She will try to poach his baker, too,’ said Chaloner, recalling what he had overheard on the Bridge. It felt like an age ago, and seemed almost too petty to mention.

Leigh was appalled. ‘Really? Then I shall lock him inside Worcester House, to make sure her agents cannot reach him. Thank you, Chaloner: the Earl will appreciate the warning. Incidentally, the old king’s ghost was seen again last night, and people are beginning to be afraid.’

‘Afraid of what?’

‘They see his appearances as a sign that something awful is about to happen. A new crack was found in St Paul’s this morning, too, while the Thames’s tides have become inexplicably erratic. These omens may mean the old order is about to topple. Perhaps the Clarendon Code
is
too harsh.’

‘Do not let the Earl hear you say that,’ warned Chaloner. ‘They may not be laws he wrote, but he supports every letter to the hilt.’

‘I know,’ said Leigh grimly. He shook his head, worried. ‘But I wish his Bishops’ Dinner was not so soon – that we could postpone it until we understand what all these portents mean.’

Leigh left the house still trying to wipe the cake from his hand. It clung like glue, and Chaloner told Hannah he was full when she tried to press another on him. Her face fell.

‘It is that horrible Earl’s fault,’ she cried in sudden distress. ‘He is responsible for you losing your appetite. I hate the way he keeps sending you on dangerous missions. He does not care if you die, and you would be better off with a master who has some scruples. Would you like me to put in a word with the Duke? I am sure he could use a man with your skills.’

‘Christ, no!’ Chaloner was genuinely appalled by the notion of working for Buckingham – and seriously doubted the Duke would be interested in hiring a man who had been employed by one of his enemies, anyway. Then he saw Hannah’s hurt expression, and relented. ‘I am not ready to abandon the Earl yet. Not in the middle of an investigation.’

‘An investigation that drove you to despair,’ she said bitterly.

‘Hannah, I did
not
attempt suicide,’ said Chaloner firmly. ‘Surely, you know me better than to think I would kill myself over some paltry enquiry?’

Hannah regarded him soberly. ‘I imagine that depends on the sort of thing you are discovering. Incidentally, Father Stephen asked me to pass you a message, but I am not sure I shall. I want you to withdraw from this business, not give you intelligence that will encourage you to delve deeper into it.’

‘If you do not tell me, I will have to ask him myself. And I would rather spend the day with you.’

She stared at him, eyes full of hope. ‘You mean it? You will stay with me all day?’

‘I will not even go to the cookshop,’ he promised, although this was a serious concession because it meant he might have to eat more of her cakes. However, even that could not detract from the pleasurable prospect of a whole day with her. He could not remember the last time he had done it, and was grateful to the Earl for giving him licence to malinger.

She smiled, won over. ‘Then can we go to see
The Indian Queen
in Drury Lane?’

Chaloner smiled back. ‘If you like.’

‘Well, as you are being so amenable, I shall tell you Father Stephen’s message,’ Hannah decided. ‘It was that the King’s dial-designer might know something about Chapel House, although Father Stephen does not know what. He says judicial questions may yield answers, whatever that means.’

Chaloner decided to interview Phillippes as soon as he could the following day.

‘I have been invited to a reception in Somerset House on Saturday,’ Hannah chattered on. ‘Normally, I would take you with me, but not this time. A lot of people who dislike Clarendon will be there, so it will be too uncomfortable for you.’

Chaloner supposed he would have to attend without an invitation, then, because a gathering of the Earl’s enemies so close to the Bishops’ Dinner was something that needed to be watched.

‘Did I tell you that the Dowager has asked me to her Shrove Tuesday ball, too?’ asked Hannah, when he still said nothing. ‘You could accompany me to that, but I suspect your Earl will force you to be at Worcester House, listening to the bishops hold forth about politics and religion.’

‘I imagine politics and religion might feature in discussions at Somerset House, too,’ remarked Chaloner. ‘The company will be full of Catholics and other dissenters.’

Hannah’s cool expression told him she had taken umbrage, reminding him that religion was one of the many subjects upon which they held diverging views. As a practising Catholic, she took her faith seriously, whereas Chaloner rarely gave his much thought.

‘Perhaps, but
we
will not be inventing laws that deny a person’s right to pray as his conscience dictates,’ she retorted acidly. ‘
We
are not tyrants.’

Sorry his thoughtless remark had offended her, Chaloner took Hannah to the play in Drury Lane within the hour. The King and Lady Castlemaine were there, although they were more interested in each other than in anything the actors were doing, and canoodled brazenly throughout.

In an adjacent box were several friends of the Dowager – the ugly Progers and three Penderels. The brothers sat silently, and did not give the impression that they were enjoying themselves. Meanwhile, Progers wrote continuously on a piece of paper, and barely looked at the stage. Chaloner wondered why any of them had bothered to come.

Another friend of the Dowager joined them during Act Two. The vicar of Wimbledon’s nose was especially purple that day, as if he had been drinking. He began whispering to Progers, loudly enough to disturb those trying to watch the play. Eventually, it even penetrated the King’s consciousness. His Majesty tore his attention away from the Lady to glare. Rashly, Luckin scowled back, and the Penderel brothers were obliged to haul him outside before he could be arrested for insolence.

During the interval, Hannah began to chat to some people she knew from Court. They were James Carkesse, a navy clerk who described himself as a poet, and his wife Susan. The discussion soon turned to the Clarendon Code. Carkesse thought it was a very good idea, because it allowed the state to identify potential fanatics; his wife disagreed, and declared it unnecessarily suppressive.

‘Even Spymaster Williamson has been heard expressing reservations,’ Susan said, to underline her point. ‘And he is a member of the government!’

‘He is just daunted by the amount of work the Clarendon Code represents for his intelligence service,’ said Carkesse dismissively. ‘It is laziness speaking, not his conscience.’

‘Regardless of his motives, he is right,’ said Hannah, never one to hold her tongue when there were issues about which she felt strongly. ‘The Clarendon Code is a nasty collection of laws, and people should refuse to obey them.’

‘The only people who would do that are Catholics and nonconformists,’ Carkesse pointed out. ‘The rest of us follow these edicts anyway.’

Chaloner changed the subject at that point, afraid Hannah would make a declaration about her own faith. Catholicism was not illegal, but it was not something to be announced to virtual strangers, either. Hannah glared at him, to let him know that she had not appreciated the interruption.

Also among the audience was Sir John Winter. He was with Phillippes and Kaltoff, laughing at some anecdote Phillippes was telling. Phillippes was elegant, handsome and graceful in his finery, but although Kaltoff’s clothes were obviously expensive, he was not the right shape to achieve the stylish insouciance for which he was aiming, and the result was vaguely comical.

When Winter spotted Chaloner, he broke away from the dial-makers and strode towards him, moustache quivering with pleasure as he launched into a description of a performance of the King’s Private Musick the previous evening. Chaloner looked for a way to escape when he saw Phillippes and Kaltoff prepare to leave the theatre, intending to follow them, but Hannah was clinging to his arm and Winter was disinclined to stop talking. With resignation, Chaloner watched the dial-makers climb into a carriage. Had they recognised him from the encounter in Chapel House, or was it some other business that called them away in the middle of the performance?

‘It pulled at the heart-strings,’ Winter was declaring, dabbing at the corner of one eye with his sleeve. ‘Even today, the memory of those haunting melodies has the power to move me.’

‘I wish I had been there,’ said Chaloner, politely masking his frustration.

‘You should be proud of your husband, madam,’ said Winter, turning to Hannah and still struggling with his emotions. ‘It is rare to see such talent among amateurs.’

‘I am proud,’ agreed Hannah, squeezing Chaloner’s hand. ‘And
I
play the flageolet.’

Few real musicians took that particular instrument seriously, but Winter was a gentleman. ‘Then I should like to hear you sometime,’ he said graciously. He frowned suddenly, and when Chaloner followed the direction of his gaze, he saw several of the Dowager’s grey-robed Capuchins.

‘It is unusual to see friars at the theatre,’ remarked Hannah, also staring at them.

‘Yes, it is,’ muttered Winter. ‘Damn! I thought I had persuaded the Dowager to excuse them from today’s performance. It is the Feast Day of St Juliana, you see, and they wanted to spend the time in private devotion.’

Hannah frowned. ‘The Dowager makes her priests watch plays?’

‘She likes all her court to be well-versed in contemporary arts,’ explained Winter. ‘The Capuchins do not mind attending musical events, but I doubt they enjoy the stage.’

‘I doubt it, too,’ said Hannah. ‘And they should not be here – people are glaring at them.’

They were doing a good deal more than glaring. A number of patrons, who had imbibed rather too liberally of the intermission wine, had surrounded the hapless clerics, and were clamouring insults at them. Among the unmannerly mob was Carkesse, who began to bawl acid remarks about the undesirability of Catholics frequenting public places.

Chaloner watched in distaste, and when the abuse turned to actual jostling, he went with Winter to escort the Capuchins out, placing himself between the friars and those who were being rather free with shoulders and elbows.

‘Thank you,’ said Winter quietly, when the friars had been packed into a coach and sent out of harm’s way. ‘I could not have managed alone – at least, not without drawing my sword, and that would not have been wise. I am Catholic myself, and people know it. I might have been lynched.’

There was a troubled expression on Hannah’s face when Chaloner returned to her. ‘The Penderels are Catholic,’ she whispered unhappily. ‘And so is Progers. Why did
they
not rescue the Capuchins? Instead, they skulked in a corner and let you and Winter take the risks.’

But Chaloner understood. ‘They are vulnerable, too, and dashing into such situations might see them targeted in future. They are wise to maintain a low profile.’

‘You did not,’ Hannah pointed out. ‘Does that mean you are at risk from bigots from now on?’

Chaloner glanced at Carkesse, and saw him muttering venomously to his cronies. He could best any of them with one hand tied behind his back, so they did not worry him, but he was unsettled to see how much hatred the Clarendon Code was engendering. Where would it end?

The second half of the play was dull, and Chaloner used the time to think about his various mysteries. He still had no idea why Blue Dick had been murdered, what the other iconoclasts planned to do, why Jane Scarlet had been assaulted, or who the masked men were that he had fought in St Mary Overie. Nor was he any further forward with learning what the Dowager and her cronies had in mind for Shrove Tuesday, except that it would probably involve fireworks and would certainly inconvenience the Earl.

He frowned suddenly. Fireworks. The Dowager was having some at her ball, made by Winter, who had procured gunpowder from government supplies. But Phillippes and Kaltoff were also associated with fireworks: Chaloner had heard them himself in the Beggar’s Bush, discussing one that had exploded. Was it relevant? For the life of him, he could not see how, but decided to keep it in the back of his mind when he questioned them about what they had been doing in Chapel House.

He turned his mind to the fact that Will Goff and Lord Bristol were in the country. Bristol represented a considerable threat to Clarendon, while Goff represented a considerable threat to the government, so both needed to be caught before any plans could be realised. And then there were the iconoclasts who were said to be gathering. Thoughts of Herring reminded Chaloner of Thurloe, and he wondered why his friend should have been hobnobbing with the man. He sighed unhappily when it occurred to him that it might have been unwise to pass the ciphers he had discovered to Thurloe for decoding – Thurloe might know their contents all too well.

Because it was not far, he suggested that he and Hannah visit Lincoln’s Inn on the way home. Hannah liked Thurloe, and agreed happily to the diversion, but they arrived to find him out. The fire had been banked, suggesting he intended to return at some point, but his manservant did not know when. Chaloner took the opportunity to look quickly around the rooms, but Thurloe was not a man to leave incriminating evidence lying around for spies to find. Chaloner did not expect to discover anything to tell him what his friend was embroiled in, and nor did he.

He took Hannah home, and spent the evening trying to teach her how to make bread that would not serve as a viable alternative to cannonballs. He was not a particularly good cook, but he could produce an edible meal when necessary, and his guests were usually in possession of all their teeth at the end of it. The same could not be said for Hannah, and by bedtime, he had reached the conclusion that she was a lost cause.