Murder on High Holborn (6 page)

‘I doubt he will want me,’ he said wryly.

‘Someone else, then. We cannot have you thrown in debtors’ gaol.’

‘No,’ agreed Chaloner, who had harboured a pathological hatred of prisons ever since he had been incarcerated in one for spying in France. He could not help shuddering at the notion.

‘But perhaps we worry unduly,’ Hannah went on thoughtfully. ‘There is plague in Holland. Maybe it will come here, and our creditors will die.’

Chaloner had lost his first wife and child to plague, and was disinclined to view it as a convenient way to cheat tradesmen. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said curtly. ‘I will see you tonight.’

‘Very well, but do not be late. I plan to bake a pickled ling pie.’

Chaloner struggled not to gulp. Hannah was an awful cook, and pickled ling pie was one of her more deadly creations – a case of rock-hard pastry filled with vinegary fish that she declined to debone or behead. He had forced down one or two to win her good graces while they had been courting, but now he wished he had been honest from the outset.

‘I doubt I will be back in time,’ he said rather desperately. ‘Give it to the servants.’

‘Oh, they shall certainly have some,’ she vowed grimly. It sounded like a threat. ‘But I shall set your half aside. Incidentally, there was talk at Court yesterday that Paul Ferine was murdered in Temperance’s club. Is it true?’

One of Hannah’s virtues was that she was liberal-minded, and did not object to her husband’s friendship with a brothel-owner. She would never visit the place herself – at least, not to partake in the revelries – but she liked Temperance, and had always treated her with friendly respect.

Chaloner nodded. ‘Did you know him?’

‘Yes. I caught him bowing to a new moon once, bobbing up and down like a demented pigeon. For luck, apparently. And he knew some very unpleasant people.’

‘Courtiers?’ asked Chaloner, when she paused.

She shot him a disagreeable glance. ‘Courtiers are not unpleasant, Thomas. I refer to dubious types from High Holborn. But ask Ferine’s particular friend Duncombe about them. I expect he will be at White Hall today.’

Chaloner went to the kitchen for something to eat before he left, and found it in the grip of frenzied activity, as if there were a houseful of demanding residents to tend, rather than two people who would be out for most of the day. One servant cleaned shoes, two sliced carrots, one washed pots and a fifth tended the fire. All worked under the beadily malevolent eye of Housekeeper Joan, who had served Hannah’s family for years, and was smug in the knowledge that her position in her mistress’s household was unassailable. She and Chaloner had been at loggerheads ever since their first encounter.

‘May I help you?’ she asked icily. ‘If so, perhaps you would wait in the drawing room. I shall send Gram to tend you.’

‘Gram?’ queried Chaloner. ‘I thought the footman was Robert.’

‘I dismissed Robert for smoking, and we have Jacob now. However, he is polishing the mistress’s shoes, so you will have to make do with our page.’

The page, who appeared to be at least seventy and whose chief qualification for the post seemed to be his diminutive size, hobbled forward. ‘I can see to you here,’ he offered. ‘What do you want?’

It was hardly the most deferential of approaches, but that was not what enraged Joan. ‘See to him in the drawing room,’ she snapped. ‘It is inappropriate for an employer to enter our domain.’

As Hannah was made welcome in there when she was ‘cooking’, Chaloner could only suppose the stricture applied to him alone. But he liked the kitchen with its blazing fire and comforting smell of bread and spices, and he objected to being told there were areas he could not go in his own home. He ignored Joan, and went to the pantry, aiming to take what he wanted to eat, not what Joan thought she could spare.

There were plates of raw meat, several live eels in a bucket, and jars of pickled fruit that had been laid up the previous autumn, although as Hannah had been in charge of the operation, a number had already exploded while others released a foul smell. Nothing was suitable for an early morning snack, and the oatmeal for the servants’ breakfast was not yet ready. Then his eye lit on a jug of milk. He drank some, aware of Joan’s quiet pleasure – cold milk was generally deemed to be poisonous. Chaloner, raised on a country estate, always associated it with the happy, carefree days of his childhood, although the kind Joan bought was thin and watery. He set the empty cup on the table, and left the house with relief.

A steady drizzle rendered the streets soggier than ever, and the filth was so deep that he wondered whether the city would ever be rid of it – or if Londoners would be doomed to wade through calf-deep muck for eternity. It reeked, too, comprising as it did a noxious mix of sewage, vegetable parings, butchers’ waste and rotting straw. City folk were used to it, so could easily be distinguished from Lady Day visitors, who wrinkled their noses and tried to preserve their shoes by placing each foot with care.

Chaloner was just raising his hand to knock on the club’s front door when it was whipped open and he found himself facing Preacher Hill. He braced himself for the usual exchange of insults, but the porter only smiled thinly at him.

‘Temperance told me that you are going to catch the villain who murdered Mr Ferine,’ he said, although it was clearly an effort to be cordial to a man he disliked. ‘And that I should answer any questions you might have. Well, I can tell you right now that the culprit was an intruder. It will not have been a guest, because they are not killers.’

As Hill’s compliance was unlikely to last, Chaloner hastened to make use of it. ‘Temperance said Ferine had detractors. Do you know who they are?’

‘Folk who disapprove of the fact that he was not a Christian, probably. I should not have let him in here, I suppose, but he was generous with tips. Or perhaps he was killed by someone from the Swan with Two Necks or the Antelope on High Holborn. Both are dens of iniquity, which I know, because I sermonise outside them, and its patrons never listen to me.’

The only people who did listen to Hill were either lunatics or people with too much time on their hands, so Chaloner did not think a refusal to heed his rants proved anything.

‘The Swan is especially disreputable,’ Hill went on. ‘And everyone who visits wears a disguise. I might not have recognised Mr Ferine, but his bucket-topped boots are distinctive.’

Chaloner was thoughtful. So Ferine had been involved in business that had necessitated hiding his identity. ‘What do you think he was doing there?’

Hill’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Being seduced by the devil. Satan likes High Holborn, which is why I preach there: to remind him that there
are
godly men in this wicked city.’

Chaloner decided to visit High Holborn later, to see if he could learn what Ferine had really been doing. ‘Will you tell me what happened last night?’

‘Ferine came at nine, the same time as Dr Lambe, who is the Duke of Buckingham’s physician. Or should I say his
sorcerer
?’ Hill hissed the last word, giving it a sinister timbre.

‘Ferine and Lambe were friends?’

‘They knew each other. After all, a pagan and a warlock are likely bedfellows.’

‘How did Ferine seem to you?’

‘Cheerful, noisy, drunk. He played two games of Blind-Man’s Buff and one of Chase the Lady before retiring upstairs with Snowflake. Earlier, he had told me that a personal disaster was in the offing for the thirteenth, and said that he intended to be home before midnight in the hope of avoiding it. He must have lost track of time.’

‘I need a list of everyone who was here – staff and guests.’

‘I cannot,’ said Hill shortly. ‘Our guests’ privacy must be respected. But you will be wasting your time if you pester them anyway. I told you, the villain is an intruder, a stranger who broke in for mischief. I will stake my soul on it.’

Chaloner entered the club cautiously – on previous occasions he had narrowly escaped being hit with lobbed food, not all of it removed from its serving dishes. But there was nothing to fear that morning, because the place was unusually quiet. Maude nodded a greeting from her desk at the foot of the stairs, and made a gesture with her hand to say that business was slow. He stood in the hall and looked into the parlour. Four patrons were playing a card game called lanterloo, while half a dozen more were enjoying desultory conversation with some of the girls. He had never seen the club so empty. Temperance came to greet him, grey smudges of worry under her eyes.

‘Williamson sent us a note saying that you will be looking into what happened to Ferine. Thank God! I was afraid he might use Doines, and that would have been the end of us for certain. As it is, rumours have started to circulate, and precious few of our regulars came last night.’

‘Courtiers have short memories,’ said Chaloner comfortingly. ‘They will soon forget.’

Temperance’s expression was bleak. ‘Will they? Reputation is everything, and ours has been compromised. You
must
find the killer, Tom. We shall not recover until you do.’

‘Then tell Hill to give me a list of everyone who was here when Ferine died. Your patrons are potential witnesses, and might have seen something useful.’

‘We cannot.’ Temperance handed him a piece of paper. ‘This explains why.’

It was the letter from Williamson, informing her that Chaloner would be investigating Ferine’s murder, and going on to say that there would be dire consequences if members of the government, Court, the Church or the mercantile community were harassed in any way. Its tone was darkly menacing, and Chaloner was not surprised that Temperance was keen to comply. He was irked, though. How was he supposed to solve the case when he was forbidden to speak to witnesses?

‘May I interview your staff, or are they off limits, too?’ he asked coolly.

Temperance patted his arm. ‘I shall assemble them for you now. Wait in the parlour until they are ready and help yourself to a glass of wine.’

It was far too early in the day for drinking, so Chaloner studied the guests instead. The four men at lanterloo were Admiral Lawson, Dr Lambe, Prince Rupert and John Scott. Scott’s face was aglow with triumph – he was on a winning streak. However, it did not take long for Chaloner to determine that his success owed more to sleights of hand than to skill.

‘I should pull out if I were you, Lawson,’ advised Rupert, as more of the Admiral’s money went across the table. ‘Or Scott will make a pauper of you.’

‘I shall be rich again when I take Dutch prizes at sea,’ growled Lawson, indicating with a nod that Scott was to deal another hand. ‘God will give them to me, because He likes me smiting His enemies. Besides, no landlubber is going to bring
me
to a lee shore at cards.’

Chaloner suspected that Scott had already done it, and it was sheer bloody-mindedness that drove Lawson to persist.

‘Are you calling
me
a landlubber?’ demanded Rupert. The Prince was notoriously quick to take offence, so was something of a liability in normal conversations.

‘The
London
’s sinking was a sad business.’ Scott quickly changed the subject, clearly afraid that a row might stop him from winning the rest of Lawson’s cash. ‘I understand you had family on board, Admiral.’

‘I did,’ growled Lawson. ‘It was meant to be a pleasant jaunt from Chatham to Queenhithe, but they ended up with an experience they are unlikely to forget, poor devils. Fortunately, they can swim, so they survived. Unlike my poor mariners. Three hundred souls…’

‘I teach all my soldiers how to swim,’ said Rupert provocatively. ‘You should have done the same with your sailors, then they might still be alive.’

‘I understand you want the vessel raised from the seabed,’ said Lambe, as Lawson’s expression went from haunted to angry. The sorcerer was a figure who commanded attention, partly because he possessed charisma in abundance, and partly because of his height and striking attire – he was wearing his star-spangled coat again, and the inked symbols on his skin were dark and mysterious in the half-light. His entry into the discussion meant Lawson ignored the Prince’s shrewish remark.

‘
Weighed
, not raised,’ corrected Lawson. ‘And yes, I do. We cannot afford to lose a ship of
London
’s calibre, not to mention the fact that she carried eighty brass cannon.’

‘Brass!’ scoffed Rupert. ‘An antiquated metal for artillery. Iron is much better.’

‘Nonsense,’ countered Lawson. ‘They explode after two rounds, because they overheat.’

‘Not if they are turned and annealed,’ argued the Prince with lofty condescension. ‘I would never allow brass guns on
my
ships.’

‘
Your
ships?’ spluttered Lawson indignantly. ‘You do not have any. And what is this “turning” and “annealing”? Describe how it—’

‘I shall soon command a fleet,’ interrupted Rupert smugly. ‘The King promised. And I will be senior to you, so take
that
, you coarse northern upstart!’

Lawson responded in language so ripe that even Chaloner was taken aback. Rupert’s reaction was more vigorous. He sprang to his feet and whipped out his sword. Lawson did likewise and they circled each other like jackals. Lambe and Scott hastily scrambled to a safe distance, although Scott swept his winnings into his purse first. The sound of rapiers whistling through the air alerted Maude to the trouble; she raced in from the hall and began imploring them to disarm.

‘Help me!’ she cried, appealing to the onlookers.

Chaloner was about to oblige but Lambe was there before him.

‘Stop,’ he ordered in a voice that held considerable authority. ‘The stars are not right for a skirmish today. You will bring bad luck on yourselves if you persist.’

‘Stars!’ sneered Lawson, although he lowered his weapon. ‘The only stars I hold in faith are the ones you can navigate by. The rest is hocus-pocus, and only fools are led by such nonsense.’

‘They are a potent force,’ argued Lambe. ‘And if you do not believe me, look at Ferine. If he had followed the advice they offered, he would still be alive.’