The Butcher of Smithfield (46 page)

‘And that is why he wanted me to go to the Rhenish Wine House with him. He anticipated that a professional spy would have
better luck.’

‘So, what did you find?’ asked Ireton, curious despite himself. ‘Documents?’

‘Music. I have assumed it is irrelevant, but perhaps I should not have done. Maylord understood its significance, even if
I do not – at least, not yet. Who wrote it? And who is it for?’

Ireton laughed derisively. ‘Music? Do not be a fool! Smegergill wanted a key, not music. He said it would pave the way to
a box of priceless jewels. Why do you think I went to the Rhenish Wine House the day after he died? It was not for music,
I assure you!’

Chaloner frowned. Locks could be smashed, so why had Smegergill wanted Maylord’s key? ‘Proof of ownership,’ he said in understanding.
‘Whoever has a key can show the hoard is his.’

Ireton inclined his head, but made no other reply.

‘Did you know there were two keys?’ asked Chaloner. He could see from Ireton’s expression that he did not: Smegergill had
not been honest with his accomplices, either. ‘He already had one.’

‘You lie! Maylord stole the only one when he was teaching Newburne the flageolet. Then, because Newburne had been cheating
Maylord for years, Smegergill told him to say the box was his. The key was proof of ownership, as you said. But then Maylord
got cold feet, and began to baulk at carrying the plan through.’

‘So you killed him,’ said Chaloner.

‘I decline to say,’ replied Ireton, although the uneasy flicker in his eyes told Chaloner that he had. ‘And you can prove
nothing. After Maylord was dispatched, Smegergill was going to retrieve the key and claim the treasure in his stead. He offered
me a share for my silence.’

‘So, who killed Newburne? Smegergill?’

‘We were both at a musical soirée when Newburne died. You can check, if you like – a dozen people saw us.’ Ireton could not
resist a brag. ‘Smegergill’s idea of leaving that cucumber with Maylord was a stroke of genius. No one except you is remotely
suspicious. Do you know
why
he devised the plan that would see Maylord the owner of Newburne’s hoard?’

Chaloner nodded, aware that Ireton’s boast about the cucumber was guilty knowledge of Maylord’s death. ‘He wanted Maylord
rich, because he was the sole beneficiary of Maylord’s will. He intended to kill his friend from the start – not to squander
the money on wild enjoyment, but to support him in his old age. His joints were stiffening, and he knew it would only be a
matter of time before he could no longer earn a living from the virginals. Now, tell me what transpired between you and Smegergill
in the churchyard the night he died.’

‘We did not—’

Chaloner tightened his grip on the dagger.

‘All right!’ snarled Ireton, trying to flinch away. ‘There is no need to decapitate me. We made an arrangement, while Kirby
and Treen dealt with you. How did you guess?’

‘Because of your actions in Smithfield last night. Treen was right when he said Crisp would want to interview the man who
everyone believes killed Smegergill, but you were eager to kill me anyway. The reason is obvious: you knew Crisp would learn
the truth from me – that I had nothing to do with Smegergill’s murder. So, what happened? How did he die?’

‘As soon as I saw him, I realised we had waylaid the wrong pair of musicians. He assumed you were dead when you fell to the
ground, and was furious, because
he said you were going to locate Maylord’s key for him. He had made plans: he was going to ask
me
to drive you to the Rhenish Wine House, and I was to knock you over the head once he had the key.’

‘What next?’

‘The graveyard ambush was a mess, and Kirby and Treen have loose tongues. He was worried about what people would think when
you were bludgeoned to death, but he escaped unscathed.’

‘So he asked you to hit him, to make it look as if we were both victims?’

Ireton pointed to his mouth. ‘I tapped him softly here. I saw him walk towards you
after
I struck him, ready to raise the alarm once we were safely away. He tripped over you – you must have felt it.’

Chaloner recalled being kicked in the side, and slowly he began to understand what had happened. Dizzy from Ireton’s blow,
Smegergill had stumbled in the dark and landed face-down on the flooded ground. And that had been that. Stunned, he had been
unable to rise, and by the time Chaloner had regained his own senses, Smegergill had drowned. And yet it was hard to feel
sorry for the old man. He had betrayed his friendship with Maylord by arranging his murder. He fraternised with Hectors, and
put his future comforts above all else. In all, Smegergill had been a selfish, odious man, and Chaloner knew he should stop
feeling guilty about his death.

There was no more to be said, and the spy was just considering the best way to deliver Ireton to the constables, when he heard
a creak on the stairs. Someone was coming.

Ireton smirked. ‘Nothing happens in Smithfield without the Hectors knowing. Here is my rescue.’

Swearing under his breath, Chaloner knocked Ireton out cold with the hilt of his dagger and made for the window. He clambered
on to the sill just as the door flew open and Kirby and Treen stood there, swords at the ready. More Hectors were hurrying
up the stairs behind them. Chaloner dropped out of the window, rolling as he landed in an attempt to lessen the impact. He
staggered to his feet and saw a carriage rattling towards him. Certain it was the Butcher, he jigged away, colliding with
Kirby, who had followed him out of the window. The felon grabbed him by the throat, so Chaloner felled him with a punch that
hurt his own hand.

‘Thomas!’ hissed a familiar voice as the coach’s door swung open. Chaloner dived through it, and Thurloe banged on the ceiling
with the butt of his handgun. ‘Go!’

‘What are you doing here?’ gasped Chaloner, struggling to hang on as the vehicle lurched away.

Thurloe raised his eyebrows. ‘The same as you, I imagine. Trying to find a way to prise Mary away from William before she
slits his throat.’

Thurloe said it was not safe for Chaloner to sleep at Fetter Lane that night, but agreed to let him collect the music, keys
and Wenum’s ledger before going to Lincoln’s Inn. While the ex-Spymaster waited in the carriage, Chaloner ascended the stairs
to his room.

The fire he had lit earlier was out, and he could no longer see. Then he remembered Hickes’s gift of oil. He groped in the
darkness for fuel, lamp and tinderbox, and was about to fill the lantern’s reservoir, when he detected a faint odour that
should not have been there. He stoppered the flask in alarm. It did contain oil, but there was also a sulphuric scent, and
there would be an explosion if he tried to light it. It might not kill him, but it would certainly cause him injury. Who would
do such a thing? Wryly, he acknowledged that there was a whole host of people who wanted him indisposed.

His first thought was that Hickes was responsible, but then he recalled how Hickes had offered to light the lamp for him.
Did that mean Hickes had not known what would happen once a flame was set to the substance? The more he considered Hickes,
the more he became
sure he was the innocent instrument of someone else’s plot. But which one of Chaloner’s many enemies was to blame? Crisp?
Muddiman? Williamson? L’Estrange? Mary? A Hector? Or was it Greeting, a man of whom he was becoming increasingly wary?

Quickly, he gathered what he wanted and left, first making sure the window was ajar for the cat – it was off hunting, and
he did not want it to find itself locked out when it returned. As the carriage rattled to Lincoln’s Inn, he told Thurloe what
he had deduced regarding Smegergill. The ex-Spymaster sighed.

‘I am not surprised to learn he would kill a friend to secure himself a comfortable retirement. What was the alternative?
Teaching men like Ireton until he died? Performing for critical patrons like L’Estrange while his hands became ever more crabbed?
But you have done enough on that case. I will arrange for the parish constables to arrest Ireton in the morning, assuming
he has not fled the city.’

‘Will they do it? They are not too frightened of Crisp?’

Thurloe rubbed his chin. ‘True. Perhaps I had better visit the Lord Chancellor instead, and arrange for a contingent of soldiers
to do it. It is a pity your reckless enquiries have not provided you with answers about Newburne, though. How much longer
do you have?’

‘Until Monday – the day after tomorrow. All I learned tonight was that Newburne probably cheated Maylord out of a fortune.
No wonder he was rich.’

‘And you think it was Smegergill’s plan to defraud Newburne of his jewels that turned Maylord so anxious in the last two weeks
of his life?’

Chaloner nodded. ‘He had his revenge, though. He hid his key, and Smegergill never did find it.’

Thurloe was thoughtful. ‘And yet there is something about this explanation that does not ring true. I think Ireton may have
been lying to you – at least in part. I do not doubt that having your dagger at his throat rendered him more willing to confide,
but can you trust what he told you?’

‘Which parts do you not believe?’

‘The business with the key, mostly. I do not see Maylord being so single-mindedly venal over a box of jewels, and originally,
Smegergill did say he wanted you to locate documents.’

‘But the “documents” were only that strange music,’ said Chaloner. He rubbed his eyes tiredly. ‘Or, more likely, I found the
wrong hiding place.’

‘I doubt you made such a basic mistake – you were trained by
me
, after all. You say this music has been cropping up in all sorts of odd places, so perhaps we should consider it more carefully.’

Chaloner tried, but answers still eluded him.

Thurloe sighed. ‘Then let us go back to Maylord, and what might have frightened him. I do not think he would have gone to
pieces over the notion of defrauding Newburne of jewels – he was stronger than that. I think something else was responsible
for his agitation.’

‘What?’ asked Chaloner, wracking his brains.

‘Hodgkinson’s print-house is near Maylord’s cottage. The news business is a dangerous one, and it would not surprise me to
learn that Hodgkinson is engaged in something illegal. And now Hickes says he is missing. Perhaps Maylord’s unease had nothing
to do with Newburne, but a lot to do with another neighbour.’

‘It is possible, I suppose. After all, Hodgkinson prints items for L’Estrange and Muddiman. And Dury
was
murdered on his premises.’ But that solution raised its own set of questions, and Chaloner could not see the answers to save
his life. He rubbed his eyes again, defeated. ‘What did you learn this evening?’

‘That Mary Cade is the widow of a Smithfield horse-trader, who also happened to know Crisp—’

‘Valentine Pettis.’

Thurloe regarded him balefully. ‘You
have
been busy. When I was Spymaster, the Hectors were just a band of brutish felons whom we periodically crushed. Now they are
a highly organised clan, and some are even intelligent. Williamson turns a blind eye to their dealings on the understanding
that they will supply appropriate manpower when he needs something done.’

Chaloner’s unease intensified. ‘What are we going to do about Will? We cannot leave him in that woman’s clutches. We may arrive
tomorrow and find it is too late.’

‘He will not appreciate being kidnapped, if that is what you have in mind. But I doubt anything will happen tonight – the
Hectors will be too busy looking for you, for a start. We will act in the morning.’

‘And do what?’

‘I will think of something. You concentrate on solving Newburne’s murder for your Earl.’

Thurloe’s servant made up a bed for Chaloner in Thurloe’s sitting room, but although the ex-Spymaster swallowed a sleeping
draught and retired immediately, Chaloner was too unsettled for rest, despite his bone-deep weariness. He sat crossed-legged
in front of the dying fire and made piles of the four sets of music; the one from Maylord’s chimney, the one L’Estrange had
given him, the one Hickes had taken from Finch’s
room, and the one Hickes said he had found in Hodgkinson’s print-shop. The light was poor, but it was enough to work by.

He compared them minutely, his curiosity piqued by Thurloe’s suggestion that they should not be too readily dismissed. All
were penned by the same hand, and when he picked them out on Thurloe’s virginals – certain the noise would not bother Thurloe
after whatever medicine he had taken – they sounded unpleasantly similar. Then he recalled the tiny scroll that had been in
Smegergill’s ring. The brief glance he had been allowed before Greeting had destroyed it had put him in mind of a cipher key
– a crib for decoding secret messages. He recalled that a C-sharp was a T and an E-flat was a W. Could the music actually
represent a message, and it was not the
tune
that the composer was trying to communicate to his listeners, but something else? Obviously, there were only seven note-names
to twenty-six letters in the alphabet, but there were sharps and flats that could be taken into consideration, along with
beats of different duration – minims, crotchets and quavers.

He started with the music from Finch’s room, because it was the shortest, working on the premise, familiar to all spies, that
some letters were used more frequently than others. It was a sequence Thurloe had drilled into him years ago, and had enabled
him to break into many a secret. The most commonly occurring letter in English was E, so he went through the music, and determined
that the most commonly occurring note was a B. The next most common letter was T, followed by A, the latter of which seemed
to correspond to a G, but one that was two beats in duration.

He made mistakes, and had to keep reworking what
he was doing, but eventually a pattern began to emerge, and the idea was so simple that he wondered why he had not seen it
before. Words began to appear, although they were interspersed with meaningless letters, a device to ensure the tune was not
too outlandish. He began crossing out the extraneous ones, until he had a message that made sense – or rather, he had a collection
of words in a rational order, which was not the same thing.