The Body in the Thames (46 page)

He took aim, and Chaloner forced himself to meet his eyes. There was something unrecognisable in the once-familiar face, and
had Chaloner been an impressionable man, he might have said it was evil.

A report cracked out, loud and sharp, but from another direction. Bulteel stood for a moment, the dag still pointed at Chaloner.
But then his knees buckled and he crumpled to the ground. Chaloner scrambled to his feet as Williamson walked towards him.
Swaddell was at his side, blowing on the smoking barrel of a gun.

‘I apologise, Chaloner,’ said Williamson quietly. ‘I was
wrong about Falcon running to the Savoy. Indeed, it seems I was wrong about a number of things, including the quality of my
friends.’

Chaloner stared at Bulteel’s body. ‘I think that is true for both of us.’

A week later

London’s weather soon reverted to normal: cool, wet and windy. Its residents complained, of course, claiming summers had been
better when they were children – skies had been blue, the sun kindly and it only ever rained at night. But Chaloner was relieved
by the change.

‘Excessive heat makes Englishmen irrational,’ he told Thurloe, as they strolled around the gravelled paths of Lincoln’s Inn’s
gardens one evening. ‘Perfectly normal men become violent, or engage in strangely uncharacteristic behaviour.’

‘You cannot blame Bulteel’s misdeeds on the weather, Tom. He managed those all by himself, with no help from the elements.
I know you liked him, but there is no excuse for what he did.’

‘Yes, I
did
like him,’ said Chaloner sadly. ‘He was not a bad man, and deserved better than he was given.’

‘Not a bad man?’ echoed Thurloe. ‘Do you want me to list all the people he killed? Oetje, Hanse, Molins, White and Compton.
And he would have had Edwards,
too, if Wiseman had not saved him. Then there was Edwards’s guard and Compton’s soldiers, including Lane … I mean Fairfax—’

‘Fairfax is mending. Mother Greene told me.’ Chaloner tried to change the subject. ‘Did I tell you that he confided that it
was
him who burgled Downing? He was looking for evidence to tie Downing to Falcon, although he was wrong on that score. Downing
was innocent.’

Thurloe continued as though he had not spoken. ‘Swan and Swallow, murdered solely to put the fear of God into anyone thinking
of challenging him, while Kicke and Nisbett—’

‘Swaddell killed Nisbett,’ objected Chaloner. ‘And Kicke jumped out of the window.’

‘No,’ said Thurloe firmly. ‘They died because of what Bulteel did. And let us not forget those whose names we never learned
– the clerks and soldiers who were slaughtered when Kicke was ordered to invade Williamson’s offices.’

Chaloner supposed he had a point. ‘He tried to remove me from danger, though. He offered me money to leave, and started a
rumour that he thought would see me dismissed and sent away.’

‘And then he tried to kill you. I admire your compassion for a lonely, unhappy man, but the truth is that he was no friend
to you. Your name was on the death list Bates found in the Spares Gallery.’

‘With a question mark,’ argued Chaloner. ‘Like Joseph Molins’s. He did not
want
to hurt me.’

‘So you say. But bear in mind that both Downing
and
Williamson have since told me that he fed them information to make them think you were a spy, purely to
direct attention away from himself. Not to mention the fact that he tried to blow you up and shoot you.’

‘That was not the worst of it. You and Hannah …’

‘Quite. He struck at two people dear to you. He even killed his kinsman, Griffith.’

‘Griffith was not his cousin. The real Griffith died years ago. The impostor arrived in February, and set about convincing
Bulteel that he was long-lost kin. But Bulteel saw through him …’

‘And promptly decided that Griffith was exactly what he needed to help him create Falcon and set the Sinon Plot in motion,’
finished Thurloe when Chaloner could not bring himself to go on. ‘However, I am deeply unimpressed with Clarendon, who spent
hours “reminiscing” with the man. How
could
he have been so easily tricked?’

‘Because he had not seen Griffith in twenty years, and the impostor was good at impersonating people – as his foray inside
Newgate showed. Moreover, the real Griffith shared a lot of personal information with the false one on his deathbed. Except
the place where he was born, apparently. Records indicate that Griffith hailed from Bedfordshire, not Buckinghamshire.’

They walked in silence for a while, savouring the damp freshness of the air.

‘I still cannot believe how close Bulteel came to succeeding,’ said Chaloner eventually, still unsettled by the whole affair.
‘I would never have guessed he was Falcon if it had not been for a phrase he happened to use – the same words as in the note
pinned on Philip Alden.’

‘The corpse at your wedding,’ mused Thurloe. ‘And the warning was intended for White.’

‘White was horrified. At the time, I thought it was just
shock at a murder in his church, but with hindsight, I see it was more than that. I imagine Compton and the others were similarly
threatened, but they kept meeting anyway, doggedly determined to foil the danger Falcon represented.’

‘So Bulteel sent them poisoned gloves, although I am not surprised he became impatient when they failed to work and sent Kicke
to speed matters along. People do not wear gloves in heatwaves.’

‘And the recipients should have been suspicious of them, anyway,’ added Chaloner. ‘Hanse’s passion was stockings, not gloves.
And there is the fact that the gloves were sent while Hanse was still alive. Had one of the others thought to thank him for
them, the ruse would have been exposed.’

They lapsed into silence a second time, and Chaloner thought about the interview he had had with Williamson the day after
Bulteel’s death. It had been decided that the Dutch delegation did not need to know what had really happened, lest it destroyed
what feeble hope remained for peace. So a drunken thief had ‘confessed’ to killing Hanse and Oetje, and official apologies
had been issued and accepted. Chaloner had agreed to the deception readily enough – to do otherwise might mean war, and it
would be unfortunate if Bulteel’s plot should succeed after all.

‘Of course, Williamson should bear some of the blame in this unsavoury affair,’ said Thurloe, after a while. ‘He naively let
himself be convinced that the Sinon Plot referred to a scheme to steal the crown jewels, when it was actually far more. Spymasters
should be less credulous.’

‘But Falcon
did
intend to have the crown jewels.’

‘I know, but Williamson should have probed deeper.’

‘That was partly Compton’s fault.
He
knew what the Sinon Plot entailed, but did not tell Williamson, because he did not trust him to thwart it. Unfortunately,
he, Hanse, Molins, White and Edwards were amateurs, and their bumbling efforts almost ended in disaster.’

‘Well-meaning amateurs,’ said Thurloe. ‘They thought they were doing the right thing – that by foiling the plot quietly, they
were giving peace the best possible chance. But to return to my original point, if Williamson had possessed an ounce of competence,
none of this would have happened.’

Chaloner smiled. ‘You would have seen through it, but he is not you, and never will be. Do you think the King will dismiss
him?’

‘No. The man is a survivor. Besides, he did save your life. He told me afterwards that it was one of the most difficult things
he had ever done.’

‘What was? Saving me?’

‘Ordering Swaddell to shoot Bulteel, especially as he had not been party to the confession that had gone before. He saw only
Bulteel pointing a gun at you, and had to make a quick decision. Thank God he made the right one. He is not all bad, Tom.
Perhaps this business will see an easing of relations between you.’

‘It might,’ acknowledged Chaloner. ‘Although I doubt it will last. Clarendon is sending me to Tangier tomorrow, to investigate
a major mismanagement of public funds, and I have a bad feeling some of Williamson’s spies are involved. We shall soon be
back to our usual state of animosity.’

‘You seem to attract the dislike of unpleasant men. Downing, for example.’

Chaloner grinned. ‘He is in a lot of trouble at the
moment. He recruited two spies in the Dutch delegation. One was Ruyven, who was next to useless, but who is demanding a lot
of money that our government will have to pay in order to avoid embarrassment. And the other was Zas.’

Thurloe frowned. ‘Zas? But I thought he was spying
on
us.
For
the Dutch.’

‘He was, and Downing lost far more secrets than he gained – Zas was too clever for him, and led him a merry dance.’

‘So, to summarise,’ said Thurloe, ‘Ruyven, de Buat and “Griffith” were spying for England, Zas pretended to be Downing’s man
but was actually Heer van Goch’s, and Bulteel was in the middle, confusing everyone.’

Chaloner grinned. ‘Yes. It makes me quite nostalgic for my days as an intelligencer.’

‘Espionage can be a very dirty business,’ said Thurloe, not smiling back. ‘Especially when men like Downing are involved.’

‘He slithered back to The Hague before Clarendon could examine his expense accounts.’

‘Good! Peace stands a better chance with him gone. He is hardly what I would call a dove.’

‘Which is precisely why His Majesty wanted him here, of course. The King stands to make a lot of money if we acquire the States-General’s
trading routes – he
wants
war.’

‘Everything seems to boil down to money in the end,’ said Thurloe in distaste. ‘Although it was not Bulteel’s motive. I heard
him say so myself.’

‘He was lying. He owned a house in Chelsey, which I visited with Williamson two days ago. He said he had inherited it from
an uncle, but the truth is that he bought
it with the money he made from blackmailing people – which he must have been doing for months, because I have never seen so
much treasure in one place. He was fabulously wealthy.’

‘What will happen to it all?’

‘Williamson will return it to Bulteel’s victims. He offered me a finder’s fee, but the whole affair was sordid, and I wanted
nothing to do with it.’

‘I heard you discovered else that was unpleasant, too.’

Chaloner nodded. ‘The body of the original “Falcon”, who plotted in the Feathers tavern with Swan and Swallow. Griffith rescued
him from Newgate, but then Bulteel ordered him killed.’

‘Why? I thought he was one of Bulteel’s minions – the one who would actually steal the jewels.’

‘He was, but Bulteel must have decided he was too great a liability with his curses and his sinister stares. His real name
was Edward Pocks.’

‘The name on the death list!’ exclaimed Thurloe. ‘But I do not blame him for preferring to be called Falcon. I might change
my
name, too, had I been burdened with Pocks.’

‘The “Falcon” we hunted was an amalgam of characters, which was why he was so difficult to find. He was an unsettling felon,
a master of disguise and a cunning intelligencer. In other words, he was a combination of Pocks, Griffith and Bulteel. Falcon
did not exist in one sense, although the damage he did was real enough.’

‘White’s name was not on this death list,’ said Thurloe. ‘Why was he omitted?’

‘It must have been written on the burned part. God alone knows how many more were there – victims claimed
and others pending. But I am sorry about White. I might have been able to save him had I known his identity sooner …’

‘Do not blame yourself,’ said Thurloe. ‘He knew the risks when he elected to tackle Falcon. But let us turn to happier matters.
I enjoyed hearing you play your viol at the Savoy last night, and so did Heer van Goch. He asked me to tell you.’

‘I performed abominably,’ said Chaloner gloomily. ‘Because I can never practise. Since we married, Hannah has confessed to
a deep dislike of the solo viol.’

‘All marriages have their problems,’ said Thurloe sagely.

‘Not ones of this magnitude,’ muttered Chaloner.

A short distance away, a man lay in bed, swathed in bandages. He was miserable and in pain, although his physician had assured
him that he would make a complete recovery.

‘How much did you salvage from this debacle?’ he asked of the visitor who sat at his side.

‘Almost all of it,’ replied Williamson. ‘Your victims must show me the original blackmail notes if they want to reclaim what
they paid. And as they paid because they want their dirty secrets buried, few have come forward. Chaloner is an odd devil,
though – he refused to accept any of it as a reward.’

‘Decent to the end,’ said Bulteel savagely. ‘Honest, incorruptible Tom.’

‘You should have come to me with your plans,’ said Williamson reproachfully. ‘We have always worked better together than alone.
And you almost brought me down.’

Bulteel winced. ‘Well, you
did
bring me down. You ordered me shot.’

‘I did nothing of the kind! Swaddell acted before I understood what was happening. Assassins have a habit of squeezing a trigger
first and asking questions later, and he always was jealous of our association. But you will recover, and then we shall turn
our attention to the future. Together.’

‘I am not sure I trust you any more,’ said Bulteel resentfully. ‘I almost died.’

‘But you survived,’ Williamson pointed out tartly. ‘And you tried to kill me, anyway – sending Kicke and his villains my way.’

‘No! I told them to keep you in your office until I had delivered my carefully forged papers to the delegates at the Savoy.
I expressly ordered them
not
to harm you in any way.’

‘Well, that makes two of us, then,’ said Williamson. ‘We are even.’

Bulteel regarded him suspiciously. ‘I still do not understand why I am not in prison. I blackmailed half the Court, and went
a long way to sabotaging the negotiations with the Dutch. The former showed you in a bad light because you could not solve
the case, and you will disapprove of the latter because you want peace.’

‘Peace is certainly the more sensible option, but it was never really on the table. The talks were doomed long before you
became involved.’

‘What about the blackmail?’ asked Bulteel. ‘How can you forgive me for that?’

‘The generous donation from Chelsey went some way to salving my wounded pride.’

‘Then why did I detect a cooling of our friendship these last few weeks?’

‘Because Griffith was always in your company, and
one needs to be careful around professional spies. Of course I maintained my distance – as I would have explained, had you
asked.’

Bulteel continued to scowl. ‘What happens if Tom learns I am alive? He will not overlook what I did to Thurloe and Hannah.
He does not understand that he would have been better off without them – a relic from a lost regime and a woman who will make
him miserable.’