A Murder on London Bridge (9 page)

The Earl eyed him balefully. ‘I suppose I should not be surprised, given your family’s political leanings, but it is not something you should admit to anyone else. Stephen is Will’s brother. Perhaps that is why he passes me information – he wants to distance himself from his treacherous sibling, just as
you
prefer not to be associated with
your
regicide uncle.’

‘Do you want me to find Herring?’ asked Chaloner, deftly turning the conversation back to iconoclasts. His flamboyant kinsman was far too uncomfortable a subject to air with one of His Majesty’s most powerful ministers.

‘I suppose you had better,’ said the Earl unenthusiastically. ‘Do you think Herring could have been one of the men you fought in St Mary Overie?’

Chaloner considered the question carefully. ‘It is possible – a falling out among fanatics. Are you sure you want me to look into this, sir? You may not like what I find.’

‘You are afraid the culprits will be decent men, who abhorred what happened to Canterbury’s cathedral, and I will be angry with you,’ surmised the Earl, although it was not his ire Chaloner was worried about, so much as being ordered to look the other way once he had his answers. He had never approved of selective justice. ‘But we should locate the villains before worrying what to do with them. Do you not agree?’

‘Yes, sir. Is there anything else I should know?’ Chaloner was acutely aware that the Earl was still holding something back from him.

The Earl hesitated, but then shook his head. ‘No. Just find some answers. You can begin by inspecting Blue Dick’s corpse in the Westminster charnel house. Surgeon Wiseman has agreed to meet you there at five o’clock.’

The Earl took Chaloner with him to view the site of his Piccadilly mansion when they had finished driving around the canal. It stood on the northern edge of St James’s Park. His Sergeant at Arms, Humphrey Leigh, was there, arguing with workmen, and Chaloner was dispatched to find out what was happening – the sun had gone in, and the Earl did not want to leave his warm carriage to stand around in the cold.

‘They say metal is more expensive now than when the plans were first drawn up, so we will have to pay double for whatever silly device they are constructing,’ explained Leigh irritably, indicating two artisans with an angry jab of his finger. ‘It is brazen robbery!’

With a start, Chaloner saw he was referring to Phillippes and Kaltoff, although he supposed he should not be surprised to see them at Clarendon House: they were building the Earl a tide-ring, after all. Phillippes was studying a pile of diagrams, his brow furrowed in concentration, while Kaltoff was packing up some tools.

‘I will talk to them,’ he offered, seeing an opportunity to ask some questions – assuming they did not recognise him from the Beggar’s Bush and run him through, of course. But he had kept his face hidden, and he had been wearing different clothes – he was fairly sure they would not associate him with the shabby stranger they had tried to trounce. ‘You can escort the Earl back to White Hall.’

Leigh brightened. ‘Really? You do not mind?’

Chaloner indicated he should go, and the little soldier marched towards the Earl’s carriage with open relief. Phillippes watched him leave, standing with his hands on his hips. Then his gaze turned to Chaloner, but there was no hint of recognition in it. Meanwhile, Kaltoff was more interested in his instruments than in emissaries from the Earl.

‘Leigh is a fool,’ Phillippes declared uncompromisingly. ‘He has no understanding of scientific matters. And his master is no better. Why does Clarendon want a tide-ring here, so far from the river? It will be of no use to him on dry ground!’

‘Perhaps he will take it to White Hall,’ suggested Chaloner, tactfully refraining from explaining that the tide-ring had only been commissioned because the King was having one. ‘His offices overlook the river.’

‘You may be right,’ conceded Phillippes. Then he gave a courtly bow. ‘But I am forgetting my manners. I am Henry Phillippes, soon to be admitted to the Royal Society. And you are?’

‘Thomas Chaloner, in the service of the Earl of Clarendon.’

‘I shall soon be admitted to the Royal Society, too,’ said Kaltoff, looking up from his tools. ‘My name is Casper Kaltoff, although do not assume from it that I am foreign. I am as English as you are, and there is no reason at all for my learned colleagues to exclude me on the basis of my heritage. I cannot help it if my mother had a penchant for the exotic.’

‘Right,’ said Chaloner, bemused. He smiled pleasantly, and addressed them both. ‘I have heard of you, of course. My friend Will Leybourn often praises your work when I visit him in Uxbridge.’

‘You know Leybourn?’ asked Phillippes eagerly. Leybourn was Chaloner’s friend, although he did not recall him ever mentioning the dial-makers. ‘I am flattered that he should talk about me. He is one of the giants of mathematics and surveying, and a man I greatly admire.’

‘He told me you were creating a tide-ring to be used in Southwark,’ said Chaloner, to lead the discussion to matters south of the river. ‘It is a—’

‘Then he is mistaken,’ interrupted Kaltoff. ‘We are only engaged in two projects at the moment – one for the Earl of Clarendon, and the other for the King. Neither involves Southwark.’

‘Was he wrong when he said he saw you in the Beggar’s Bush, then?’ asked Chaloner, adding artfully, ‘Perhaps it was someone else’s scientific theories that so impressed him.’

‘Oh, he may have heard us pontificating in the Bush,’ said Phillippes carelessly. ‘We like it there, because the landlord lends us his yard to conduct our experiments in. Or he used to, at least. We live on the Bridge, you see, where there is no space to do anything.’

‘In Nonesuch House?’ asked Chaloner, deliberately pandering to their vanity by making the assumption that they could afford the finest house available.

Phillippes looked pained. ‘Unfortunately not. We live with Tyus the bookseller, who rents his upper storeys to professional men wanting lodgings. It is poky, but convenient for monitoring the tides. I shall write a treatise about them soon, which will have the Royal Society wondering why I was not invited to be one of their founder members.’

‘Have they set a date for your enrolment?’ asked Chaloner.

Phillippes waved an airy hand. ‘Not yet, but it will not be long. Then they will see what they have been missing all these years.’

‘I am sure they will,’ said Chaloner. He changed the subject. ‘I do not suppose Tyus has any vacancies, does he? I might be looking for rooms myself soon.’

Unfortunately, this was true. Fifteen months before, the house next to the one where he lodged had caught fire, resulting in major subsidence in the adjoining properties. His landlord refused to accept that anything was wrong, but a leaking roof, slanting floors and buckling walls suggested otherwise. The place was ripe for collapse, and Chaloner did not want to be in it when it fell.

‘He is full at the moment,’ replied Phillippes. ‘There
were
some free rooms, but Kaltoff here moved into them last month. I am sorry to disappoint you, especially as you are a friend of Will Leybourn’s. What else did he say about me?’

‘That he would like to hear more of your ideas,’ lied Chaloner. ‘Whatever you expounded in the Beggar’s Bush clearly caught his fancy. Do you ever discuss anything other than science?’

It was a little blunt, but neither Phillippes nor Kaltoff seemed to notice. Both hastened to answer.

‘
I
hold forth on all manner of subjects,’ declared Phillippes proudly. ‘In fact, there is very little upon which I do not hold an opinion.’

‘And no one can tell
me
anything I do not already know about mathematics,’ bragged Kaltoff.

‘What about iconoclasm?’ asked Chaloner baldly. ‘Leybourn is very interested in that.’

‘Is he?’ Phillippes regarded him askance. ‘Well, each to his own, I suppose.’

‘I do not like it,’ said Kaltoff, wrinkling his nose. ‘Smashing churches is not a very nice thing to do. But here comes the blacksmith with our new samples. We have better get to work, Phillippes, or Clarendon and the King will never have their tide-rings.’

They left before Chaloner could ask more, although he felt he had pushed the discussion as far as he could without giving himself away. He had learned one useful fact, though: they lived on the Bridge – the place where Blue Dick had been murdered. Later that day, he decided, he would visit their lodgings and search them for evidence of other connections.

It was noon, and the time when men went to taverns, cookhouses and ‘ordinaries’ for their midday victuals. Hannah had given Chaloner something she claimed was cake that morning, but it had been hard and salty, and he had tossed it on the fire the moment she had turned her back. She had many talents, but cooking was not one of them.

Hungry now, he decided to dine at Rider’s Coffee House on Chancery Lane. It was a long way from Piccadilly, and the food was hardly worth the journey, but he was not going for his stomach alone. When he arrived, he opened the door, blinking at its dim, smoky interior, and looked around.

The man he wanted to see was slightly built, with blue eyes and brown hair. His clothes were simple but well made, and showed him to be a man of comfortable means. John Thurloe, once Cromwell’s Secretary of State and Spymaster General, was softly spoken, with mild, almost diffident manners. But there was a core of steel in him that had led more than one traitor to underestimate him – and spend the rest of his life regretting it.

Rider’s was Thurloe’s favourite coffee house, where he liked to keep abreast of current affairs by reading the many newsbooks, newsletters and pamphlets to which the landlord subscribed. Usually, he sat alone, preferring his own company to the cross-section of men – never women – who came to drink Rider’s dubious brews and enjoy the occasionally erudite conversation. That day, however, he was the centre of attention. It was so odd to see the reticent ex-Spymaster holding forth to the world at large that Chaloner stopped dead in his tracks and listened.

‘It is ridiculous,’ Thurloe was saying in an uncharacteristically strident voice. ‘The government has no right to tell people how they might commune with God, and the Clarendon Code is an absurd and wicked piece of legislation that should be challenged until it is overturned.’

Chaloner was horrified. Thurloe was likely to get himself arrested if he went around making that sort of statement. And it was peculiar behaviour, to say the least: Thurloe was normally the soul of discretion, and rarely ventured opinions about politics, even to his closest friends. Chaloner regarded him in concern.

The ex-Spymaster had not long returned from his family home in Oxfordshire, and looked fit and well. Chaloner had been delighted to see him back, because Thurloe was his only real friend in London and he had missed him – although if Thurloe was going to start making perfidious speeches in public places, then Chaloner might wish he had stayed away longer. He grabbed the ex-Spymaster’s arm before he could add anything else, and escorted him politely but firmly to a table at the back of the room, mumbling something about an urgent private consultation.

‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ Chaloner hissed when they were safely out of earshot. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’

Thurloe regarded him coolly. ‘I might ask you the same question. Coffee houses are commonly accepted forums for expressing opinions. I am within my rights to say what I think.’

‘
You
are not,’ argued Chaloner. ‘As you know perfectly well. You are not an ordinary citizen, and your criticisms will be seen as treason. Do you want to be hanged?’

‘You are overreacting,’ said Thurloe impatiently. He clicked his fingers at a serving-boy, who brought a dish of coffee for Chaloner, and a bowl of something that smelled of rotting vegetation for him. Chaloner winced when Thurloe downed it in one. The ex-Spymaster was something of a hypochondriac, and was always dosing himself with some new remedy that promised vitality and health. Perhaps, Chaloner thought worriedly, one had caused him to lose his wits.

‘Are you ill?’ he asked, rather more gently. ‘Tell me what is wrong.’

‘Nothing,’ replied Thurloe. ‘I am as well as any man with a delicate constitution.’

‘Perhaps you should return to Oxfordshire.’ Chaloner sipped the coffee. As usual, it was unpleasantly acrid, and he was glad he had not acquired a taste for it, because he suspected it would dissolve his teeth if he drank it every day.

Thurloe ignored the suggestion. ‘Try one of these pills, Tom. They promise to cleanse the head of foul vapours.’

Chaloner brushed the proffered tin aside, and looked hard at his friend. ‘Something is amiss, but it has nothing to do with foul vapours. What can I do to help?’

‘I never could deceive you, could I?’ Thurloe shot Chaloner a rueful grin. ‘But I am afraid it is something I cannot discuss with you, so please do not press me. In fact, I would rather you were not seen with me at all. You have at last risen in favour with Clarendon, and it would be a pity to jeopardise that by hobnobbing with outspoken Parliamentarians.’

Chaloner raised his eyebrows. ‘Risen in favour? I do not think so!’

‘You are wrong,’ said Thurloe quietly. ‘The Earl relies heavily on you now.’

Chaloner knew Thurloe was leading the discussion away from his curious and uncharacteristic rant against the Clarendon Code – the laws that had been passed during the Earl of Clarendon’s Lord Chancellorship, so bore his name – but he also knew he had pushed him as far as he could. Thurloe was stubborn, and it would take a far more devious mind than Chaloner’s to bend him. So, he allowed the conversation to turn to his own problems instead.

‘Clarendon neither trusts me nor likes me,’ he said, rather bitterly. ‘But he needs me to deal with the more unsavoury aspects of his existence. Today is a good example. He has ordered me to investigate the murder of an iconoclast called Blue Dick Culmer, and to learn what another iconoclast called Herring plans to do in the future. But he will not tell me why.’