Death in St James's Park (32 page)

‘I was surprised to see Oxenbridge here,’ he said. ‘You told me after the explosion that he was not one of your patrons.’

‘Tonight was his first time, and I hope to God it will be his last. I did not see him come in, and neither did Hill. We just looked around, and there he was. It was rather eerie if you want the truth.’

‘You could have asked him to leave.’

‘I started to, because he was unsettling my other guests, but when he turned those glittering black eyes on me, my nerve failed. I started gabbling silly questions at him instead.’

‘I do not suppose you asked him where he lives, did you?’

‘I did, as a matter
of fact, but do you know what he said? That he lays his head wherever the fancy takes him. What am I supposed to make of that? And when I asked if he had any family, he said they are an encumbrance that he has never deemed necessary.’

‘Le Notre seemed to like him.’

Temperance smiled. ‘Dear le Notre. He is a lovely man, and likes everyone.’

He had not liked O’Neill, thought Chaloner, recalling how he had warned against furthering a friendship with the Controller and had arranged for him to be blamed for breaking Hannah’s clock.

‘He had a very nasty experience yesterday,’ Temperance went on. ‘His carriage was attacked, and he was lucky to escape with his life. Well, it was not his carriage, it was Palmer’s. The public mood is against Palmer, but it is his own fault. He should not be planning to publish Pope-loving texts. Were you at Tothill Street last night, by the way? I hear there was a riot.’

‘There are riots most nights. Too many taverns.’

‘I do not suppose you could secure me a crane, could you?’ asked Temperance after a while. ‘Lord Rochester has expressed a desire to have one roasted.’

‘No,’ said Chaloner shortly. ‘And do not try to poach one from St James’s Park, because they are very well guarded. You will be caught.’

‘Anything can be bought in London, if one has enough money. Anything at all.’

‘Not a crane,’ begged Chaloner. ‘Or any other exotic bird. It would break Storey’s heart.’

Temperance softened. ‘Well, if you
put it like that … Incidentally, what did Hannah say when you told her you were caught in that explosion?’

‘Nothing much. Why?’

‘In other words, she did not care. I wish you had not married her, Tom. She is a nice lady, but you are woefully ill-matched.’

‘Have you heard any more rumours about the Post Office?’ asked Chaloner, changing the subject very abruptly. He was not sure what he disliked more: the fact that Temperance felt free to make such remarks, or the fact that they were true.

Temperance patted his knee in sympathetic understanding, then answered his question. ‘There have been plenty more tales, but I do not know if they are accurate. It is said that O’Neill has hired additional clerks, so that every piece of mail can be read before it is sent.’

‘I doubt that can be right. The task would be impossible.’

‘Then there is a story that abuses are on the increase – mailbags “lost” and business letters sold to rival concerns. And there is a report that something is being built there. It involves Morland.’

‘Samuel Morland?’

‘I detest him. He slithers about like a snake, and I have no idea whether he is loyal to the King or not. He tried to come here, but I told Hill to toss him out. He was furious, but I was not having the likes of him near my guests when they are too drunk to be sensible.’

Chaloner determined to corner Morland
as soon as possible, and this time there would be no rescue from Gery. ‘Wiseman wants me to visit Sir Henry Wood this morning, to tell him his wife was murdered. It will not be a pleasant task.’

‘No,’ agreed Temperance. She was thoughtful. ‘Wood says some very peculiar things, but only to those who do not matter. When he is with important people, like the King, he is perfectly sane. Personally, I think he just likes to see folk wrong-footed.’

‘Do you think it is possible that he killed Mary?’

Temperance started to say no, but then stopped and was silent for a while, considering. ‘I would like to think not,’ she said eventually. ‘But there is a ruthless streak in him. He slaughtered dozens of Roundheads during the wars, including women and children.’

‘Wiseman said you heard it was Dorislaus who started the tales about Mary being poisoned.’

Temperance relit her pipe, while Chaloner studied her shaven head, stained teeth and portly features, and wondered what it was about her that the surgeon found so utterly irresistible.

‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Dorislaus is a sly villain, and probably a Dutch spy as well. However, I have no evidence, and only repeat whispers. And there is another rumour about Mary, too, which I heard from the Duke of Buckingham.’

‘Yes?’

‘His chambermaid was intimate with one of the Woods’ servants, a lad named Joyce. Well, according to Joyce, Mary had had a mysterious visitor just before she died – one who was most insistent that he should speak to her.’

‘I doubt it is true. Why would he let guests pester his mistress when she was ill in bed?’

‘She was on the mend and was bored, apparently – the small-pox is infectious, so no one had been to see her. The caller was well-dressed and told Joyce that he was a friend.’

‘Do you know the chambermaid’s name?’ asked Chaloner, supposing he would have to ask her about the story, given that the hapless Joyce was not in a position to oblige.

‘Nancy, but she is a saucy piece, who will whisk you into her bedchamber just as soon as look at you. She wanted to work here, but I considered her too wanton.’

Chaloner left, bemused to learn that someone could be deemed too wanton for a brothel.

Dawn was only just breaking as he walked
towards Buckingham’s house, but despite the early hour, he saw two men he knew. They were Stokes and Cliffe, marching with backs erect and shoulders back, grey moustaches bristling with military precision.

‘We saw Spymaster Williamson join you after we fled Will’s Coffee House the other day,’ said Stokes in distaste. ‘I did not know you were acquainted with that sort of person.’

‘I did not invite him to sit with me,’ objected Chaloner, unwilling to be considered one of Williamson’s toadies. ‘He did it because everyone else had disappeared.’

‘I always run away when he arrives,’ said Cliffe loftily. ‘I do not care for such company.’

‘Well, it looked suspicious,’ said Chaloner. ‘As though you had something to hide.’

‘We did have something to hide,’ averred Cliffe. ‘We had just been discussing the licentiousness of Court. There are some who would consider that treason.’

‘Although there are many more who agree with us,’ said Stokes. ‘Especially now Palmer aims to publish books urging us all to love the Pope. Rebellion is bubbling in Yorkshire, Sussex, Nottingham, Bristol and God knows where else. The whole country will be in flames soon.’

‘Williamson is next to worthless at quelling trouble,’ grumbled Cliffe. ‘And he is a fool. Did you know that he is offering fifty pounds for the arrest of that postal clerk? It is a ridiculous sum.’

Stokes’s expression was wistful. ‘I wish
I
knew where Gardner was. I would love fifty pounds.’

‘I am not surprised Gardner is in trouble,’ said Cliffe acidly. ‘I know him, because he always dealt with my enquiries in the Letter Hall. He looks like a harmless yokel, but I always thought there was something untoward about him. Not like poor Knight. I doubt
he
did anything wrong, and the villains who took him to Newgate should be strung up themselves.’

‘You are up early,’ said Chaloner, immediately uncomfortable. ‘It is barely light.’

‘We have been to church,’ explained Cliffe. ‘St Dunstan’s does a pre-dawn service.’

‘Some of them should try it,’ remarked Stokes, nodding to where a coach was rattling
past, full of courtiers. They were bawling a tavern song, and one of them hurled an empty decanter out of the window. It smashed against a wall, a sound that elicited drunken cheers.

‘Brutes!’ declared Cliffe angrily. ‘Their behaviour is disgraceful.’

‘
She
was in that coach,’ said Stokes, lips pursed in furious disapproval. ‘Lady Castlemaine. In company with men of dubious character – Sir Alan Brodrick, Will Chiffinch, Lord Rochester. All are dissipated scoundrels who should be locked away.’

‘But her husband is nowhere to be seen,’ added Cliffe. ‘Doubtless he is on his knees in front of the Virgin Mary, muttering in Latin. He should concentrate on bringing his whore-wife to heel, and leave religion until he has time for it.’

Chaloner walked away, thinking that Cliffe could never have been married, or he would know that such advice was easy to dispense, but a lot harder to put into action.

As Temperance had promised, Nancy
was indeed a saucy piece, which was doubtless why she had been hired – the Duke liked a romp, and it was clear that Nancy would be a ready and willing partner. She leaned against a bureau in the Duke’s best parlour, more than happy to shirk her duties and answer questions put by Hannah’s husband.

‘Yes, Dick Joyce told me about the stranger who visited Lady Mary before she died,’ she purred. ‘Perhaps it was as well that Dick was blown to pieces, because if he was alive, he might have been held responsible for the fact that she was poisoned. And she was, you know – all London is talking about it.’

‘What did he tell you, exactly?’ asked Chaloner.

‘That Mary was bored, lying in bed alone, so when this stranger came and said he wanted to speak to her, she told Dick to let him in. An hour later, when Dick went to take her a tonic, the visitor had gone and she was dead.’

‘Did he say what this person looked like?’

‘He did better than that – he pointed him out to me.’ Nancy adjusted her ample bosom in a way that ensured Chaloner’s eyes would be drawn towards it. ‘The fellow happened to be passing when we were chatting. It was what prompted Dick to tell me the story in the first place.’

‘Where were you when this happened?’

‘Outside the Wood mansion in Post House Yard. The villain was on his way to the General Letter Office. To post a package, I suppose.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘He was about your height, with bushy yellow hair and a round pink face.’

Gardner, thought Chaloner, whom Knight had asked about a murder, but which had been denied unconvincingly. Was killing Mary the crime Knight had been talking about? Chaloner supposed he would have to find out.

It was still too early to visit
Wood, so Chaloner went to the Rainbow Coffee House, hoping a dish of the beverage would sharpen his wits; Farr’s charred beans were a lot safer than the toxic sludge Temperance had offered him.

‘I would like to invite you all to my shop the day after tomorrow,’ Speed was announcing. ‘For the first sales of Palmer’s book. I promise it will be an interesting event.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Stedman archly. ‘We are not interested in Catholic rubbish.’

‘It is not rubbish,’ snapped Speed. ‘Palmer is erudite and insightful. He is a good Royalist, too, despite what the King has done to his marriage, so there will be nothing seditious either.’

‘Speaking of Royalists, how was your visit to the Crown yesterday, Stedman?’ asked Farr conversationally. ‘It is known to be full of Cavaliers, so you must have felt at home.’

‘And so I might,’ replied the printer sourly, ‘had Clement Oxenbridge not been lounging by the fire. He is so sinister that I could not bring myself to stay.’

‘I do not blame you,’ said Speed with a shudder. ‘There is something disconcertingly
spectral about that man, and no one knows anything about him – of his family, his home, his life. It is almost as if he were a ghost. And he spreads trouble like a disease.’

‘My apprentices believe he is the devil come to walk among us,’ said Stedman in a low voice. He glanced around uneasily, as if he imagined Oxenbridge might suddenly appear and hear him.

‘The King held a terribly loud party last night,’ said Farr, after a short silence; Stedman’s words had unsettled everyone. ‘With all his courtiers dressed as Romans. It raised complaints from as far away as Charing Cross, and I have been told that the racket sparked a riot in Tothill Street.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Stedman. ‘The King’s soirée had nothing to do with that: a letter from John Fry did. He wrote to the Printers’ Guild – on costly paper sealed with fine purple wax – to ask why we pay such a high tax on ink. It set our apprentices alight with indignation.’

‘John Fry,’ sighed Speed. ‘He has become a nuisance with his feisty opinions.’

‘I quite agree,’ said Stedman. ‘But my fellow printers consider him a Messiah, and marched off to tackle the ink factory near Tothill Street. I had nothing to do with it, of course.
I
am no rebel.’

‘Complaining about taxes is not rebellion,’ said Farr. ‘I shall join a demonstration myself later today – one in which coffee-house owners express their disapproval over the increased revenues on sugar. Chaloner is my only customer who does not use it, and it is expensive.’

‘Chaloner does not take sugar?’ Stedman eyed Chaloner in wary disbelief. ‘Why not?’

‘He is practising for when he visits Russia,’ supplied Farr, patting the copy of Olearius’s
Voyages
, which showed signs of having been thoroughly pawed. ‘Sugar is not available there.’

A little later that morning, Chaloner
knocked on the door to Wood’s mansion, and was conducted to a sitting room on the first floor that afforded a fine view of Post House Yard. Bookshelves lined the walls, their tomes about subjects as diverse as cartography, natural history, mathematics and philosophy. However, it was not Wood’s choice of reading material that caught Chaloner’s eye as much as the fact that he already had visitors: Dorislaus and Vanderhuyden were with him.

‘Tom!’ exclaimed Dorislaus. He smiled without warmth. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’

‘Do not loiter there like a cabbage,’ snapped Wood. He was standing on a table with a spoon in his hand. ‘Come in, where I can see you. Hah! It is Chaloner the regicide. Have you come to conspire with Dorislaus? He is another who worked to see the old King dead.’