Death in St James's Park (7 page)

The ambitious navy clerk Samuel
Pepys was there, too, with a group of men from the newly formed Royal Society. He glanced in Chaloner’s direction, but did not acknowledge him. Chaloner understood why Pepys was reluctant to admit an association in front of his influential friends: Chaloner’s clothes had not been smart before the blast, but now they made him look positively disreputable.

‘We shall have something to eat, too,’ determined Wiseman. ‘Roasted duck.’

‘No,’ said Chaloner hastily, his encounter with the feathered residents of St James’s Park too fresh in his mind. ‘Not a bird. Not today.’

Wiseman regarded him in concern. ‘How hard did you hit your head when you landed on the ground? Is there any ringing in your ears?’

‘Perhaps there is quacking,’ quipped Temperance. Then she shuddered and took a substantial gulp of posset. ‘I do not think I will ever forget what happened in Post House Yard today.’

‘Five dead,’ sighed the surgeon. ‘Including two boys. Apparently, they had come to collect feathers from Edward Storey. He was out, but their youthful curiosity must have been snagged by the sight of an unattended cart. I suspect they were in the process of filching logs when it blew up.’

‘I saw them,’ said Temperance. ‘They looked like beggars. But why did they want feathers?’

‘For hats,’ explained Wiseman. ‘Storey supplies the Court milliners, and these lads delivered them for him, apparently. The other victims were Wood’s servant Joyce, and the Alibond brothers.’

‘Not Job and Sam!’ cried Temperance in dismay. ‘But I know them, Richard!’

Wiseman reached out to hold her hand. ‘I am sorry, dearest. They heard Chaloner raise the alarm, but were too fat to heed it – they could not waddle away fast enough.’

‘They were portly,’ acknowledged
Temperance. ‘When they came to the club, they ate far more than anyone else. But I liked them, and I shall miss their visits. They were postal clerks.’

‘It could have been much worse,’ said Wiseman soberly. ‘The yard was packed with folk, partly because it was nearing the noon deadline for letters, and partly because someone was playing the flageolet and people had stopped to listen to him.’

‘Was the musician among the injured?’ Chaloner had only the vaguest recollection of the man – a tall, thin fellow of mediocre talent, whose hat had shielded his face.

‘No,’ replied the surgeon. ‘He must have run away when he heard you yell.’

Chaloner regarded him uneasily. ‘Do you think he was there to encourage people to linger, so that the carnage would be greater?’

‘I would not think so,’ said Wiseman, startled. ‘What reason could he have? He probably fled to avoid prosecution – there is a bylaw banning itinerant performers from this part of the city.’

Chaloner was not sure what to think. ‘What did he look like?’

‘I did not take much notice. Ask Jeremiah Copping, one of the postal clerks who was injured. When I tended his wound, he said he had been listening to the music before the blast. He will probably answer your questions, although he is an arrogant sort.’

Coming from Wiseman, this was a damning indictment.

‘Copping was friends with the Alibond brothers,’ added Temperance unhappily. ‘They often came to the club together. Poor Copping. He will miss them, too.’

‘How badly hurt is he?’ asked Chaloner. ‘And where does he live?’

‘He had a large splinter in
his neck.’ Wiseman’s eyes gleamed at the recollection. ‘I removed it with deft efficiency, although he cried like a baby. He should make a full recovery. He lives with his sister, who owns the Catherine Wheel tavern on Cheapside.’

Temperance began to reminisce about the Alibond brothers at that point, while Chaloner struggled to remember exactly what he had seen and heard just before the explosion. He had been trained to be observant, and knew he should have been able to describe any number of people in the crowd, but the images in his mind were blurred and disjointed, like looking through thick fog.

He stopped trying to force the issue, and instead thought about Gery and the new staff he had hired. Why had he picked Morland? The man was brazenly treacherous, and only a fool would trust him. Moreover, the Earl was always claiming that he did not have enough money to pay his staff, so why was he suddenly able to afford Gery, Freer, Morland and six soldiers? Yet again, Chaloner had the sense that something untoward was brewing in the Earl’s household. It might even explain why he himself was being packed off to Russia, a distant and very dangerous place from which he might never return.

When he finally dragged his attention back to his friends they were discussing Mary Wood.

‘There are rumours that she was murdered,’ Temperance was saying. ‘Are they true?’

‘I was summoned to tend her,’ replied the surgeon pompously. ‘But she was dead by the time I arrived. It was certainly the small-pox, though: the marks are unmistakeable.’

‘There was no evidence of
foul play?’ pressed Temperance.

‘None that I saw.’ Wiseman rubbed his hands in gluttonous anticipation when the pot-boy arrived with an assortment of roasted meat. ‘Goose! What a treat.’

‘Will you examine her again?’ asked Temperance. ‘Just to be sure?’

Wiseman shrugged. ‘Why not? Someone should quell these nasty tales. Perhaps you will join me, Chaloner? The woman was a courtier, so you must be interested. And if I do discover anything amiss, Clarendon will ask you to investigate.’

‘He is more likely to ask Gery,’ said Chaloner, not without rancour.

‘Even more reason for you to come, then,’ said Wiseman, clapping a friendly hand on his shoulder. ‘You can claim prior knowledge of the case, and solve it to impress him. Come to the Westminster charnel house on Tuesday afternoon, and we shall assess her together.’

‘Why so long?’ asked Temperance. ‘She may be buried by then.’

‘Her funeral is next Wednesday – Wood told me himself at Court today.’ Wiseman’s tone was haughty. ‘And I cannot possibly spare the time before that – I shall be too busy with the injuries arising from this blast. Including tending you, Chaloner. You do not look at all well. Allow me to—’

Chaloner stood hastily. ‘There is nothing wrong that an early night will not cure.’

Unfortunately an early night was not
on the agenda for Chaloner. He arrived at Tothill Street to find Hannah entertaining. He tried to sneak upstairs without being seen, but she had heard the front door open, and came to intercept him. She was unsympathetic when he told her about the explosion, and he was left with the sense that she thought he had been caught in it for no reason other than reckless bloody-mindedness.

Once he had changed into respectable clothes, he went to the drawing room and did his best to play the gracious host, but he was exhausted and his head ached. Moreover, he was not naturally loquacious, and hated the vacuous frivolity of Hannah’s courtly friends. The only person there of remote interest was Daniel O’Neill, although only because of his connection to the Post Office. O’Neill was with a woman who looked uncannily like him – elfin, dark and with brightly interested eyes. When Chaloner approached, O’Neill introduced her as his wife Kate.

Kate held a very elevated opinion of herself, and immediately set about informing her listeners – at that point comprising Chaloner, her husband and an infamously debauched courtier named Will Chiffinch – that her embroidery was the best in London. Chiffinch quickly grew bored, and asked O’Neill about the Post Office blast instead. An agonised expression crossed O’Neill’s face, and Chaloner studied him closely, thinking that here was the man accused of having the Major imprisoned and Bishop dismissed. Were the tales true? And was his distress at Chiffinch’s question genuine, or was he just an extremely able actor?

‘It was dreadful,’ O’Neill replied. ‘Five dead, including the Alibond brothers, who were two of my best clerks. Fortunately, there was very little damage to the General Letter Office itself.’

‘The news is all over White Hall
that two of your men are accused of corruption,’ said Chiffinch. ‘And that one is now in Newgate Gaol. Do you think the other left the gunpowder in revenge for being exposed?’

There was a flash of something hard and unpleasant in O’Neill’s eyes. ‘It is possible, because I inherited that pair from Bishop. I should have followed my instincts and dismissed them, as I did the rest of his staff, but they begged me to be compassionate, and like a fool I capitulated.’

‘I would not have given in,’ declared Kate. ‘When Bishop became Postmaster at the Restoration, he re-hired a lot of old Parliamentarians, on the grounds that they knew how to run the place. But it is better to have inept Royalists than efficient Roundheads.’

Chaloner did not agree. He and others like him had been sent home from Holland because the new Spymaster had decided to replace them with untried Cavaliers, and intelligence on England’s most serious enemy had suffered a blow from which it had never recovered. And now it seemed the same narrow-minded principles were being applied to the Post Office. He supposed it explained why the service had gone downhill once the more enlightened Bishop had been ousted.

‘I have nothing against a little ineptitude,’ Chiffinch was saying. ‘Indeed, I am prone to it myself on occasion. However, the service you provide is a disgrace, and I cannot tell you how many of my letters have gone astray since you became Postmaster.’

‘Controller,’ corrected O’Neill tightly. ‘I decline to use the same title as that rogue Bishop. And there is nothing wrong with my service. If your missives failed to arrive, then it is because you addressed them incorrectly.’

Chiffinch bristled indignantly. ‘I assure you I did not. And you were wrong to expel Bishop’s people, because their experience would have helped to—’

‘One does not need experience
to be a postal clerk,’ interrupted O’Neill contemptuously. ‘All they do is accept letters and shove them in bags to be delivered.’

Even Chaloner knew the work was more complex than that, and O’Neill had just displayed a woeful ignorance about the foundation he was supposed to be running.

‘Put me in charge,’ suggested Kate. ‘I will turn it into a decent venture. And there will be no Gardners and Knights to steal our profits either, because I shall hire
honest
men.’

‘And how will you do that, madam?’ asked Chiffinch archly.

‘I can tell a good man from a rogue,’ declared Kate, glaring first at Chiffinch and then Chaloner in a way that said she thought they might well belong to the latter category. ‘I can distinguish between Papists and Anglicans at a glance, too. I would certainly not have any of
them
working in the Post Office.’

‘Any of whom?’ asked Chaloner, bemused. ‘Catholics or Protestants?’

‘Pope lovers,’ hissed Kate, eyes glittering. ‘They are an evil force in our country, and I applaud the laws that suppress them. I only wish we could burn them at the stake, too, because that would make them think twice about plotting against us.’

Chaloner had no particular religious affiliation, but Hannah did, and he objected to her being insulted in her own home. ‘There is no Catholic plot to—’

‘There are dozens of them.’ O’Neill
cut across him sharply. ‘And anyone who does not believe it is a fool. Bishop is Catholic, of course, which is why he tried to ruin the Post Office – as a covert act of treason.’ He turned crossly to his wife. ‘And the Post Office
is
profitable. I make princely sums every week, and the King was very kind to have
appointed me to such a lucrative position. I deserved it, of course. There was no one more loyal than me when he was in exile.’

Kate was about to reply when the door opened, and another guest arrived. Chaloner did not know him, although an immediate chorus of impressed coos suggested that everyone else did. The newcomer minced into the room waving a lace handkerchief and wearing a silk suit so tight that it had to be uncomfortable. His face was smeared in white paste, and his red-dyed lips and cheeks were stark against it. Much was explained when the language of the gathering immediately switched to French for his benefit – London fashions were outrageous, but Paris had contrived to take them to new levels of absurdity.

‘Monsieur le Notre,’ gushed Hannah, hurrying to greet him. ‘I am so pleased you could come.’

‘He is a landscape architect,’ explained Kate in an undertone, seeing Chaloner’s mystification. ‘Hired to design stunning new gardens at the palace that is currently being built at Versailles. However,
our
King has invited him to London first, to see what can be done about St James’s Park. It is a coup for Hannah to claim le Notre as a guest.’

‘What is wrong with St James’s Park?’ asked Chaloner, a little indignantly.

Katherine regarded him pityingly. ‘Well, nothing, if you like boring swathes of grass.’

‘Perhaps we can dispense with those dreadful birds, too,’ added O’Neill. ‘They make a terrible mess by the Canal, and I dislike their raucous honking. They should all be shot.’

‘Three of them were killed recently,’ said Chaloner, wondering whether
the Controller and his wife were responsible. They certainly seemed unpleasant enough.

‘We heard,’ said Kate. ‘The King is vexed, and Clarendon has promised him a culprit. Foolish man! The villain will never be caught – he will be long gone by now. Ah, Monsieur le Notre. How lovely to meet you.’

Finding himself alone, Chaloner stepped into the hallway for a respite. Wafts of conversation drifted towards him. Mary Wood’s death was one of the main topics, along with speculation as to whether it would lead her husband to lose what scant wits he still possessed. There was also a lot of discussion about the Post Office explosion, and it was generally agreed that supporters of Parliament were responsible.

‘There is a rumour that John Fry is in the city,’ O’Neill was informing a group of horrified listeners. ‘Fomenting a rebellion that will destroy the monarchy for ever. It will begin with the assassination of a famous person, apparently. I sincerely hope
I
am not the intended victim.’

‘But John Fry is dead,’ said Hannah, puzzled. ‘Eight years ago. It was in the newsbooks.’