The Fire Court

by Andrew Taylor

  I laid my hand on Cat’s arm. ‘Wait.’

  For a moment there had been a gap in the traffic passing to and fro. On the other side of the road were the sooty gables of the Half Moon, with the roofs of Clifford’s Inn beyond. As Poulton’s coach moved aside it revealed the entrance of the alley I had explored yesterday.

  Standing on the edge of its shadows, by the corner of the inn, was a tall man in a dark cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. He was leaning on a staff. He was too far away for me to make out his face clearly, even under the hat, but I could see that he was looking into the ruins. I knew he was looking at me.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘That man over there.’ Sourface. ‘I think he knows me.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘On the far side of the road. Standing to the left of the tavern. The tall, thin man. Another man’s just come up to him. A man with a cart.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.

  ‘Is that Clifford’s Inn behind the tavern?’ Her intelligence moved too quickly for comfort. ‘Is this something to do with the Fire Court?’

  I ignored the question. ‘I don’t want to meet him. We’d better go to Covent Garden another way. Back to Shoe Lane and down Harp Alley to the Fleet. We can cross the ditch and find a hackney on Ludgate Hill.’

  ‘You won’t meet him,’ Cat said. ‘He’s gone now.’

  I turned back to Fetter Lane. The carter was still there, but Sourface must have gone into the alley.

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t recognize you after all,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he was just looking past you at the place where the body is.’

  I didn’t reply. If Sourface had been watching me for any length of time, it was equally likely that he had no need to follow me. He would have seen me talking with the Coroner’s men. He would just have to ask one of them who I was.

  ‘Or,’ Cat said, ‘if I’m wrong and you’re right, he can just ask the Coroner’s men who you are.’

  At Whitehall, I found Mr Williamson pacing arm-in-arm with Mr Chiffinch in Matted Gallery. That was both surprising and disturbing.

  Neither man cared for the fact that I served the other as well as himself. It was an open secret that the two of them were not close friends. One served Lord Arlington and the other the King. They had few tastes in common.

  Williamson caught sight of me first. ‘Marwood,’ he said, asserting a prior claim to me, ‘are you come to tell me you’ve finished that copying at last? I hope you are, or by God, you shall pay for it.’

  I bowed at the space between the two men, where their arms met. ‘Yes, sir.’

  I knew by this opening that the Shoe Lane murder was not something that Williamson wanted discussed in the hearing of Mr Chiffinch. For this I was grateful.

  ‘I will look over the letters in a moment,’ Williamson went on, ‘and sign them. They must go down to the Post Office today.’

  All the while, Chiffinch was looking at me, not directly but aslant, rubbing the great wart on his chin as if it were itching. His colour was always high, but his cheeks were more flushed than usual. I guessed that he had dined well. It was a curious fact that Chiffinch was capable of drinking steadily and in volume, yet he never seemed drunk.

  Williamson flapped his hand at me. ‘Go back to the office and wait for me.’

  ‘To my lord’s?’ I asked, meaning Arlington’s office overlooking the Privy Garden.

  ‘No. Scotland Yard.’

  I bowed to them and withdrew. Williamson did not keep me long. As he passed through the outer room where the clerks worked, he beckoned me to follow him into his closet.

  ‘Is it the Widow Hampney?’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘Her Uncle Poulton confirmed it. He came while I was there.’

  Williamson sat down at his desk. ‘And?’

  I picked my words with care. ‘It appears that Mistress Hampney had been lying in a cellar near Shoe Lane for some days. She had been covered in rubble.’

  ‘Murder, then.’

  ‘Yes. There was a stab wound below her left breast which probably hit the heart. And an artery in her neck had been severed.’

  ‘Was she killed where she was found?’

  ‘Probably not. There wasn’t much blood around the body.’ I didn’t want to bring my father into this, or Clifford’s Inn. ‘The body had been mutilated after death – by animals for sure, and probably by a thief as well. Someone had cut off a finger, perhaps to remove a ring.’

  Williamson sat back in his chair. While I was speaking, he had taken up an ivory toothpick and was cleaning his teeth. He laid this aside and rubbed the bristles on his chin. ‘And the rest of the report. Was that true as well?’

  ‘Her gown, sir? Yes. And she was patched and painted as well.’

  ‘And Poulton was quite sure of her?’

  ‘Yes, sir. So was his housekeeper, who came with him. They were … distressed by the lady’s clothing, as well as by her death. But they knew nothing of how she had come to be there, or of a lover, or any reason why anyone should wish her harm. She didn’t live with them, but in lodgings in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. They hadn’t seen her since the Sunday before last.’

  He grunted. ‘So. Part of the matter is clear, at least. She was robbed, and that was probably why she was murdered, too. No doubt there were other things of value about her.’

  He paused and stared at me. I had the sense he was testing me, though I did not know why or even how.

  ‘Why,’ he said, ‘it’s clear enough. A secret lover. And if we ever lay the man by the heels, we shall find that he killed her and robbed her corpse. Not a pretty tale.’

  ‘Then my Lord Arlington believes that her murder was merely a private crime? That it had nothing to do with affairs of state as he feared at first?’

  ‘It’s nothing to you what my lord believes, Marwood. As far as it touches you, you will bear in mind that this poor woman’s death will bring much shame on her family and friends. No doubt the Coroner will deal with it as he thinks fit. As for us, we must do our best to ensure that there are no unseemly broadsheets and ballads on the subject. You must report any that you come across. I shall tell my lord that we will come down on the culprits very sharply.’

  Everything printed in the country was subject to censorship. Both of us knew that tracing culprits and enforcing the law was often impossible, particularly for such things as ballads and broadsheets, which were here today and gone tomorrow. Still, his order was significant.

  ‘Of course if you find any further intelligence about the murder,’ he went on, ‘make sure you bring it to me first. Don’t spread it abroad.’

  I bowed.

  ‘Enough of that. Bring me the letters to sign.’

  Williamson waved me from the room. Two things were now clear to me: he wanted to have sole control of any further information about the murder I might gather; and he was more concerned to quash publicity about it than to see the murderer on the gallows.

  Which suggested that someone of considerable influence had put pressure on Williamson in the few hours since I had walked with him in St James’s Park. And I could not help wondering whether that person had been William Chiffinch, the Keeper of the King’s Private Closet.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘You look very fine tonight, my love. I could drown in your eyes.’

  ‘You are pleased to make fun of me.’ Jemima smiled across the table, wanting to believe in his love though she could not be sure of it. ‘You’re a wicked man, sir, indeed you are.’

  ‘True, I’m a sinner,’ Philip said. ‘But only you can forgive me.’

  He raised his glass to her and drank a silent toast. The Limburys were having supper in the parlour. They were sitting at a table pulled up to the fire. Jemima’s body glowed – Mary had washed her this afternoon, and then rubbed her down with perfumed oils and dressed her hair with especial care.

  Philip enquired about this with delightful solicitude, and then made her chee
ks glow too by suggesting that one day they should wash each other in all their private places.

  ‘Or, even better,’ he said, leaning towards her, ‘we shall have a bath built for us – a stone trough, big enough for us to lie side by side and pleasure each other as fishes do.’

  ‘But the cost, sir …’ she protested, blushing all the more.

  ‘What is money compared to love? Besides …’

  She knew what his silence said. Besides, one day your father will be dead, his estate will come to us, and we may have a bath the size of a millpond if we should wish it, and fill it with milk and honey.

  ‘Which reminds me,’ he went on. ‘You remember those earrings we talked of last night?’

  Her happiness fell away, as she had feared it would. ‘The ones from my father?’

  ‘Yes. You offered to let me sell them or pawn them to assist me in our Dragon Yard venture.’

  ‘You suggested I should, sir,’ she said sharply. ‘I did not offer.’

  His smile did not falter. ‘And you kindly agreed, from the sweetness of your heart. I know, my love. It must seem … What? Greedy of me? Unkind?’ Philip’s face was now so open, so frank, one could not imagine a devious thought could exist in his mind. ‘But, as I explained, this is for us. And I have a particularly pressing need – an expense concerned with this business that I simply could not have foreseen.’

  She delayed, for form’s sake. But she knew from the start that she would give in, as in the end she generally did. When Philip had set his mind on something, who could resist his sugared words, his smiles and his caresses? In her limited experience, only her father: but her father was so obstinate he would argue with God Almighty at His judgement seat if he disagreed with God’s verdict.

  When at last she said yes, Philip rose from his seat, knelt beside her chair, took her hand and kissed it. She stroked his cheek.

  ‘Tonight,’ he whispered. ‘May I come to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh yes.’

  Then he leapt to his feet and, saying there was no time like the present, rang the bell. A few minutes later, Mary brought down the jewel box and set it on the table. Jemima unlocked it with her key and took out the earrings. She placed them on the table between them.

  ‘I know you never cared for them, my love,’ Philip said. ‘They never pleased you. But what I do with them will please you. That I promise.’ His hand closed over the earrings, drew them towards him and tucked them away. ‘I told you of my new street, did I not? It will cut through Dragon Yard into Cheapside, with my fine new houses on either side. I shall call it Jemima Street, in your eternal honour.’ He paused, his eyebrows rising in comical consternation. ‘Unless you would prefer Syre Street, in honour of your father and your family as well? It is too momentous a decision for me to make. It must be yours alone.’

  So, by degrees, he expunged the sour taste the transaction had left behind. He made her laugh with a long, involved tale involving a squabble between pages in the Bedchamber. Philip could make a nun laugh on Good Friday if he set his mind to it. She was still laughing when there was a hammering on the hall door.

  Her mood shattered. ‘Who’s that? And so late?’

  ‘Only old Gromwell,’ Philip said.

  ‘What in God’s name is he doing here?’

  ‘I told him to call. Didn’t I say?’

  ‘No, sir, you did not.’

  They heard the front door slam and the rattle of the bolts and bars. She frowned at her husband across the table. ‘Twice in one week? You do him too much kindness.’

  ‘Friendship is like a vine, my love. A man must cultivate it to increase the harvest and improve the grape.’

  ‘Some old vines are not worth the trouble. They are better grubbed up to make way for new ones.’

  He wagged his finger at her as if indulging a child. ‘You turn a pretty phrase.’

  ‘I shall withdraw.’

  ‘No,’ he said, smiling, as if this was a conversation about something frivolous. ‘You shall stay.’

  Footsteps crossed the hall. The servant announced Mr Gromwell, who bowed so low to her that for a moment she thought he might topple over.

  ‘I am rejoiced to see you looking so well, madam. I hope you will forgive me for disturbing you at supper.’

  ‘Not at all, sir,’ she was obliged to say, though her voice was chilly and she did not look at him.

  He had already supped, he said when Philip pressed him to eat something, but he joined them at the table and took a glass or two of wine with them.

  ‘You are quite recovered from your indisposition, I understand?’ he said, peering at her across the flame of a candle. ‘There is no sign of it at all – indeed, if I may say so, madam, I believe I have never seen you look so radiant. Philip, will you allow an old friend to toast your wife, to worship with profound respect at your hymenal altar? And join me in raising a glass to her beauty?’

  Afterwards, Philip pushed back his chair and glanced at his guest. ‘Well, we must not linger in my wife’s company, much as we would wish to.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ She noticed Gromwell look sharply at her; he had never heard that tone in her voice.

  ‘Whitehall, my love. Didn’t I tell you? Gromwell and I will stroll across the park and watch them at cards.’

  ‘And will you play yourself, sir?’ she asked, her voice cold.

  ‘No – I’ve long since put away such childish things. I shall be as sober as a Puritan at prayer.’

  Gromwell had risen too. ‘I wish we could remain, my dear lady, but I confess I have work to do there.’

  ‘Work? Is that what you call it?’ Philip laughed as if he had not a care in the world. ‘He hopes to find more subscribers for his great book. You remember, madam? His Natural Curiosities of Gloucestershire. Those who win at cards are easy game. Their generosity knows no limits.’

  A moment later the men were gone, leaving her to stare at the fire while the servants cleared away the remains of their supper. What did Philip expect her to do with herself now? He would pay for his discourtesy, she told herself. Preferring Gromwell to her, and at such a time, and with so little regard for her feelings – it beggared belief! She would not be trifled with. Did she love Philip any more? Did she hate him? She hardly knew. Her feelings swung erratically from one side to the other, like a drunk man staggering home in the dark.

  After a while, Mary came into the room. She made her curtsy and waited in silence.

  ‘Well,’ Jemima said at last. ‘Why are you here? I didn’t call you.’

  Mary bowed her head on its long white neck. ‘Forgive me, my lady. It was something I heard in the kitchen. I thought you would wish to know.’

  ‘Why would I wish to hear servants’ prattle?’ Jemima hesitated. ‘What was it?’

  ‘A boy called before supper with a letter. Hester took it into the study and gave it to master. She said there were two letters, one sealed within the other. And he tore them open and swore as he read them. He kicked over a chair, he was so angry.’

  ‘Who was it from?’

  ‘She didn’t know. He locked the letters away. Then he gave her sixpence and told her to pick up the chair and not to speak of what she’d seen.’

  Coal shifted in the grate, and a flame spurted high, casting a flickering light into the room.

  ‘There’s something else, mistress. Hal heard it at the stables when he took the coach back. They’ve found a woman’s body between Shoe Lane and Fetter Lane, somewhere in the ruins. She’d been stabbed …’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps a whore? But she was wearing a silk gown, they say, and so perhaps she was a lady.’

  Celia, Jemima thought, could it be Celia?

  The two women stared in silence at each other. By some trick of the light, Mary’s green eyes reflected the glow and turned red.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  On Friday morning, Hakesby arrived late from his lodgings in Three Cocks Yard. He ha
d hardly sat down before there was a knock on the door of the Drawing Office.

  Mr Poulton was waiting outside, the crown of his hat brushing the low ceiling of the landing. His deep-sunk eyes were red-rimmed. He was already dressed in mourning, though his suit showed signs of wear. At his age, which Cat thought to be at least fifty-five if not sixty, she supposed that you must be hardly ever out of mourning.

  ‘Mr Hakesby within?’ Poulton demanded.

  Cat curtsied and held the door wide. She began to murmur her condolences on the death of his niece, but he brushed past her. Hakesby rose to his feet, and bowed low. Brennan rose to his feet as well.

  ‘I’m determined to build on Dragon Yard,’ Poulton said loudly, ignoring Hakesby’s attempt to speak. ‘All the more so now. It will be a fitting memorial to my poor niece.’ He shot a glance at Cat. ‘We – that is, I – have decided to employ you about the business. If you are willing, and if you will press it forward as urgently and as swiftly as if it were your own.’ He drew out a purse. ‘You won’t find me ungenerous.’

  ‘I shall be honoured to give the matter my best attention,’ Hakesby said.

  ‘One question first. Forgive me, but I think you are not in the best of health.’

  ‘It is but an ague, sir. It comes upon me sometimes, and then it goes away. It doesn’t affect my ability to work, not where it matters.’ Hakesby tapped his forehead. ‘As for the rest, I employ a draughtsman to draw up my designs, and I hire others if I need them, while I remain, as it were, the presiding genius. But may I ask a question in my turn? What will happen to your niece’s leasehold interest in Dragon Yard? The Fire Court petition may rise or fall because of that.’

  ‘The leasehold comes to me. On my advice she made a will before her marriage. Had he lived, of course, her husband Hampney would have had everything. But he’s dead, and there were no children. So, by the terms of her will, her estate falls to me.’ He hesitated. ‘Assuming that she did not make a later will.’

  ‘You will need to make sure of that, sir.’

  ‘Of course. But her lawyer is also mine – I saw him yesterday, and she hadn’t asked him to draw up another will. But we must search her papers.’ He paused, moistening his lips. ‘I’m sending my housekeeper to my niece’s lodgings after dinner, to pack up her things. If there’s a later will, we shall find it there. Which reminds me, sir, I have a favour to ask.’