Chaloner held out the letter addressed to Bankes, which he had taken from Thurloe, when the germ of an idea had begun to form in his mind. ‘No, but I believe this is intended for you.’
Williamson’s eyes narrowed, and he did not take it. ‘Why would you think so?’
‘First, because I have just visited the Swan on Cornhill, and the landlord’s description of “Mr Bankes” sounded uncannily like you. Second, because this note is written in terms that an intelligencer might use to his spymaster. And third, because who else but a government official would be able to pay a “generuss summe” for information? Of course it is you.’
Williamson scowled as he snatched it. ‘Then let us hope no one else guesses, because Mr Bankes wins considerably more information than poor Mr Williamson.’
Chaloner was not surprised. It was one thing supplying intelligence to an anonymous source, but another al-together to give it to an unpopular spymaster. With the admission, a number of things became clear – and not just about Bankes either.
‘It is from Copping,’ he said. ‘Your mole at the Post Office.’
Williamson regarded him coldly. ‘No, it is from Jonah McPiperige, a Wapping tailor.’
‘Jonah McPiperige is an anagram of Jeremiah Copping, who inadvertently let slip that he sells information. No wonder he was so terrified when I visited him! He believes he was injured in your service – that the gunpowder was aimed at him.’
‘And was it?’ Williamson made no further effort to refute Chaloner’s conclusions.
‘Possibly. The cart was brought by the Yeans, who panicked when they heard me shout. Instead of running away, they tried to douse the fuse, which was why they ran back to it – they were not stealing firewood as we all assumed. I suppose they realised that Copping was going to escape, so decided to postpone the operation. Except that such devices are not easy to put out once they are lit.’
‘But you had already seen the fuse burning, so the matter was going to be investigated whether the powder ignited or not,’ Williamson pointed out.
Chaloner recalled what Mother Greene had said about them. ‘Yes, but they did not have the wits to think it through. Whoever hired them probably wanted Copping’s death to be one of many, so you would not realise that your mole was the intended target. But the Yeans left the cart – sans horse – in a place that aroused my suspicion. They were well paid, but they were not up to the task.’
Williamson’s expression was difficult to read. ‘Who is this ruthless villain?’
Chaloner shrugged. ‘But you had better tell Copping to leave London, because the soldiers his sister has hired cannot protect him.’
‘Damn,’ muttered Williamson. ‘He is the only postal clerk I managed to turn, although his injury has kept him from helping me of late. You had better come with me, lest he is inclined to disregard the advice. He does not trust me, despite my best efforts to win his affection.’
‘You tried to turn Knight, too,’ said Chaloner, rather accusingly. ‘“Bankes” pestered him relentlessly with demands for information, and when they failed, you applied to Clarendon for an arrest warrant – to frighten him into complying.’
‘And Clarendon precipitated me by sending you to implement it,’ said Williamson in some disgust. ‘Knight would have been perfectly safe in my cells, but he was taken to Newgate instead, where he was murdered. It was a wretched waste.’
‘A waste indeed,’ said Chaloner coldly. ‘Of a decent man.’
Williamson waved a dismissive hand. ‘Yes, he was innocent, but Gardner was not. I intended to question them both, then give Knight enough money to live in Limehouse with his woman.’
‘The warrant was unnecessary. He was desperate to share what he had—’
‘He was only desperate once he was in Newgate. Before that, he was as closed-mouthed as all the other clerks. Why do you think I was obliged to contact him in the guise of Bankes? Because he refused to confide in his Spymaster General.’
‘He would have done, had you handled him properly. Your antics with Bankes terrified him – a mysterious man whom no one knows, and who might even be one of the Post Office’s criminals.’
Regret flared in Williamson’s eyes when he realised he might have miscalculated, but it was quickly masked. He banged on the ceiling and called Copping’s address to his driver. Chaloner was about to jump out, preferring to interview the clerk with Thurloe, when it occurred to him that Copping might reveal more to the current Spymaster than a past one. He sat back. He could always take Thurloe to see Copping later, should Williamson’s efforts prove to be unfruitful.
Once they were underway, Williamson began to talk about the Post Office, revealing that he knew even less about what was happening than did Chaloner. The only detail the spy did not know was that the Alibond brothers were corrupt. With the revelation, more answers snapped into place.
‘Then I suspect Copping is rotten, too,’ he said. ‘First, because he insists that the Alibonds were innocent when you have proof that they were not. Second, because Rea mentioned his name in a curious way in the churchyard yesterday. And third, because his sister’s tavern screams of the kind of wealth that comes with a sudden windfall – a much larger one than you have paid, I am sure.’
Williamson was horrified. ‘But that means all the intelligence he passed to me is tainted!’
‘Yes,’ agreed Chaloner. ‘Which explains why the plot has been able to gain such momentum – his disinformation has kept you confused and uncertain. However, if he was the intended victim of the blast, then it suggests that his masters are unimpressed with his efforts. He is probably in considerable danger.’
‘Perhaps I should let them have him,’ said Williamson bitterly. ‘It would serve him right.’
* * *
They arrived to find the Catherine Wheel in darkness and no sign of the guards. Filled with foreboding, Chaloner picked the lock. When it snapped open, Williamson followed him along the hall to the parlour in which Copping had been recovering. The gleam of a lamp and murmuring voices indicated that someone was within. Before Chaloner could stop him, Williamson had flung open the door and stalked inside. Copping stood there with his sister, a pair of saddlebags over his shoulder. His neck was still bandaged, although he seemed otherwise recovered.
‘You!’ he exclaimed angrily when he saw Williamson. His eye twitched convulsively. ‘How dare you come here!’
‘Please do not leave, Jeremiah,’ said Widow Smith plaintively, ignoring the newcomers. ‘I can protect you. Me and my guards have kept you safe for a week now.’
‘Yes, but you cannot do it indefinitely, and my life has been in danger ever since he turned me into a spy.’ Copping scowled furiously at the Spymaster. ‘I should never have let him seduce me with his traitors’ gold. Get out of the way, all of you. I am risking myself no longer.’
‘You can go when you tell me who is behind all this mischief,’ said Williamson, not moving.
‘Go to hell,’ snarled Copping, his tic growing more pronounced. ‘I am done with you. It is your fault that I am forced to abandon everything I hold dear.’
‘You knew the risks,’ said Williamson. ‘It was your own choice to play the Judas. However, I shall pay a substantial bonus for the name of your master.’
Copping regarded him pityingly. ‘You have no idea what you are dealing with, do you! You are as lost and confused as you were two months ago, when all this started.’
‘Then explain it to me,’ said Williamson, manfully swallowing his very considerable pride.
‘Why not help him, Jeremiah,’ coaxed Widow Smith. ‘These villains cannot harm you if they are all arrested. Then you will be free to live here again in safety.’
‘He will never best them,’ sneered Copping. ‘Besides, the answers are obvious. A rebellion is brewing, and they are behind it. John Fry writes letters intended to inflame, and there will be an assassination that will set London alight.’
‘Who will be the victim?’ asked Chaloner.
‘That
is obvious, too,’ snapped Copping. ‘It will be le Notre, to sour relations between England and France – a dangerous thing on the eve of war with the Dutch. Or perhaps it will be the King or Buckingham, whose murders will set the whole country aflame. Or—’
‘Give me the names of the perpetrators, Copping,’ ordered Williamson. ‘If you oblige, I will let you to live here unmolested. Refuse, and you will end your days on the scaffold.’
The threat was barely out of his mouth before fury suffused Copping’s face, and he hauled his sword from its scabbard. He hurled himself at the Spymaster with a scream of rage, and Williamson, no warrior, would have been skewered if Chaloner had not leapt forward to protect him. Copping promptly turned his ire on the spy, going after him with a series of swipes that had him retreating backwards faster than was comfortable in a chamber crowded with furniture.
‘Stop!’ Chaloner yelled. ‘You should be thinking of escape, not fighting us. The guards have gone from the front door, and I imagine they have been bribed to leave. You are in serious danger.’
But Copping’s blood was up, and he was beyond listening to reason. He employed a peculiar twisting motion that almost jerked the sword from Chaloner’s hand. The move was familiar, and told the spy that he had done battle with this particular opponent before.
‘It was you in St James’s Park! You went there to kill the royal fowl.’
Copping’s only response was to embark on another wild offensive that required all Chaloner’s skill to counter. Chaloner’s task was not made any easier by Widow Smith, who flailed at him with her meaty fists. Williamson did his best to restrain her, but she was a very large woman.
‘Why kill birds?’ Chaloner gasped, hoping to distract Copping with questions.
The attack intensified, and the clerk spoke in short sentences between swipes. ‘The money is good. I am better than Smartfoot. He only got ducks. And Leak poisoned himself! I bagged a penguin. And a swan. I would have had a crane. If you had not interfered.’
‘It was you who took Knight’s letters?’ Chaloner was tiring, lacking his opponent’s enraged strength.
‘I sent them to the plotters today. But too late. They are my enemies now.’
When one of Widow Smith’s swipes caught Chaloner’s sword arm, almost allowing Copping to disembowel him, he knew he needed to do more than defend himself. He lobbed his dagger, and when Copping ducked to avoid it, he surged forward and pinned him against the window, holding him in a grip that prevented him from moving.
Suddenly, there was a crack, and Copping gasped in shock. Then there was another bang, accompanied by the sound of smashing glass. Chaloner dived to the floor, yelling for the others to do the same. Three more shots followed, and Copping slid down the window in silent agony. Then there was silence.
Chaloner scrambled to his feet to see a face peering through the broken glass. He made a grab for it, but hands punched him off. He saw three shadows running away, but could not follow because the glazing bars were too narrow for him to squeeze through. With a sense of enormous frustration, he watched Copping’s killers make an almost leisurely escape.
Chaloner declined a lift in Williamson’s carriage and went to Lincoln’s Inn on foot, using the journey to think about what had happened. His glimpse of Copping’s assailants had told him nothing to let him identify them, and Williamson had been too stunned by the incident to provide any intelligent analysis.
Was it Oxenbridge, Gardner and Rea who had killed Copping? Or henchmen sent by some other suspicious character, such as O’Neill, Harper, le Notre or Wood? Chaloner grimaced. His own inability to provide even a vague description meant that Williamson had no grounds to arrest and interrogate any of them, and he hated the fact that murder had been committed right under his nose. What professional spy allowed that to happen?
Widow Smith had been a poor source of information, too. It had quickly become apparent that she had known little about her brother’s life, despite the smug assertion she had made when she had first met Chaloner. She had been aware of the arrangement with ‘Mr Bankes’, but had assumed Copping’s sudden influx of wealth had been due to the high quality of his reports, and it had not occurred to her that he might have been playing one side against another.
Chaloner arrived at Chamber XIII, relieved to find the ex-Spymaster alone. The last thing he needed was for Dorislaus, Gery or Prynne to be there.
‘Trouble?’ asked Thurloe, watching him sink into a fireside chair.
Chaloner described what had happened at the Catherine Wheel.
‘Damn it, Thomas!’ Thurloe rarely swore, and the expletive revealed the depth of his exasperation. ‘How could you have been so careless? He was our best source of information, and his death deals our enquiry a serious blow.’
‘There is still the Major,’ said Chaloner, painfully aware that he had not comported himself well in this particular investigation. ‘We are due to meet him outside the Tower tonight.’
‘I will meet him,’ said Thurloe testily. ‘You will not. He is more likely to confide if Gery’s loose-cannon of a rival is not looming over my shoulder.’
Chaloner winced at the description. ‘But it may be dangerous for you to go alone.’
‘I am quite capable of looking after myself. I was Spymaster General, you know. Besides, I am unlikely to come to harm right by the Tower with yeomen to hand.’
‘The Major is a target for assassins,’ argued Chaloner. ‘You may be caught in—’
‘So will you, if you are with me. Or do you think you can repel bullets?’
‘Killers will not risk discharging firearms outside the Tower.’ Chaloner tried to keep the irritation from his own voice, knowing a display of vexation was likely to turn Thurloe even more vehemently against him. ‘They will use swords, which I can fend off. God knows, I have had enough practice of late.’
‘Nothing will happen,’ stated Thurloe firmly. He reached for his coat. ‘Was there anything else you wanted? I have an important meeting with a contact, and I do not want to be late.’
‘Dorislaus?’ asked Chaloner uneasily.
‘Yes,’ said Thurloe with such icy coldness that Chaloner dared not ask more.
He aimed for the stairs, Chaloner following and desperately trying to think of how he might redeem himself. ‘I think the best way forward is to tackle Oxenbridge and Gardner. I will corner Rea and force him to—’
‘You will not,’ snapped Thurloe. ‘Even if you find them, which is unlikely – a reward of fifty pounds has not exposed Gardner, while Oxenbridge’s lodgings remain a mystery even to my superior detecting skills – you will not crack them. Moreover, if you cause them to panic, they may go to ground. We cannot afford that. Leave well alone, Thomas. You have done enough already.’
Chaloner took his leave subdued, unsettled and unhappy. Reluctantly, he supposed he had better visit the Earl, given that he had been prevented from doing so the previous day. He walked down Chancery Lane, feet crunching on the frost that had settled across the city.
He happened to glance left when he reached Fleet Street, and saw Stokes and Cliffe lurking by the door of St Dunstan-in-the-West. He was puzzled for a moment, but then saw Lord Castlemaine’s coach standing nearby. Several burly footmen were lounging near it – Palmer was aware of his unpopularity and had wisely hired guards to protect him.
‘He is inside,’ explained Cliffe, when Chaloner asked what the two veterans thought they were doing. ‘Why, when he is not Anglican?’
‘A church is a church,’ said Chaloner. ‘And Palmer is devout. He—’
‘But he may do harm in there!’ cried Cliffe. ‘Or is he surveying it, to see how it might best be blown to pieces, perhaps as part of the revels surrounding the publication of his papist book?’
‘I do not suppose you would ask him to come out, would you?’ asked Stokes hopefully. ‘Even if he is not plotting sabotage, a fellow who cannot keep his wife in the marriage bed has no right to haunt a decent establishment like St Dunstan’s.’
Chaloner regarded him coolly. ‘Interrupt a man’s private communications with God?’
‘He will not be communicating with God,’ declared Cliffe uncompromisingly. ‘He will be communicating with the Pope – through diabolical means. In our church.’
‘No,’ said Chaloner sharply. ‘It is—’
‘If you will not stop him, then we must,’ said Stokes. His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword, and the guards immediately tensed. ‘His henchmen will probably kill us, but at least we shall have died doing what is right.’
‘Wait,’ ordered Chaloner, unwilling to see anyone skewered in a brawl that could be avoided. ‘Stay here. And no caustic remarks when I bring him out. Agreed?’
Both old men nodded, although Cliffe did so grudgingly. Chaloner opened the door and stepped into the scented gloom of the nave, aware that two of the soldiers had detached themselves from their fellows to follow.
He had always liked St Dunstan’s, an oasis of peace on one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city. It had a lot of dark wood, but large windows made it airy. He walked towards the chancel, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor. Palmer was standing in one of the aisles holding a lantern, and Chaloner saw that le Notre was with him.
‘Chaloner!’ exclaimed the Frenchman. ‘What a pleasant surprise. If only we had three viols. What beautiful music we should make in this magnificently resonant building.’
Palmer smiled a greeting. ‘Its rector said there are some especially fine monuments here, and as le Notre and I share an interest in such things, we decided to inspect them. However, if you have come to pray, we shall leave you in peace.’
‘Would you consider returning tomorrow, sir?’ asked Chaloner, thinking it an odd thing to do after dark – they would have seen more in daylight. ‘With the rector, if possible. He is a liberal man, but his parishioners are not. They are worried about what you might do in here.’
Palmer started to laugh, but then realised that Chaloner was serious. ‘Lord! I know some folk are narrow-minded, but I did not realise the extent … Well, perhaps my book will correct some of these misunderstandings, and lead both sides to a greater tolerance.’
Death in St James's Park: 8 (Exploits of Thomas Chaloner) Page 29
