Blood On The Strand: Chaloner's Second Exploit in Restoration London (Thomas Chaloner)

by Susanna GREGORY

  ‘She found time to tell you, though,’ observed Chaloner.

  Scot glanced sharply at him, then smiled. ‘I conclude from that ambiguous remark that you saw us together. You did not slink off the moment an escape route presented itself, but lingered, waiting for everyone else to leave. I should have known you were not far away.’

  ‘Have you been lovers for long?’ It was none of Chaloner’s business, but they were friends, and he was curious by nature and training.

  ‘More than a year. We wanted to tell you, but it is difficult to find a quiet moment these days. She is going to have my child.’

  ‘Behn will be surprised. I imagine he is under the impression that she wants to marry him, given the looks of simmering adoration she throws in his direction. Does she intend to have you both, then?’

  Scot laughed. ‘Marriage and love are hardly the same thing. Yes, she will marry Behn, but it is not a partnership that will last. He is already unfaithful, and makes regular visits to Silence Webb, among others. We hope Eaffrey will be a wealthy woman once she offers to leave him in return for a settlement.’

  ‘You are encouraging her to marry Behn with the express purpose of acquiring an alimony? That is sordid!’

  Scot was unrepentant. ‘The government confiscated my father’s estates after his execution, and I do not want our child to grow up poor. Do you really disapprove? I thought you disliked slavery – and the victim of our “deception” is one of its greatest proponents.’

  ‘Could you not just sabotage his new ship instead?’

  ‘God, no!’ exclaimed Scot with a shudder. ‘I shall have to travel to Surinam by boat, and I am superstitious about that kind of thing. However, Behn is a wicked villain behind that courtly veneer—’

  ‘What courtly veneer?’

  Scot was lost in a world of his own. ‘I had a good look around his private office yesterday, when I was waiting for him to tire of Eaffrey and go to Silence. He has documents written in cipher. Now why would a merchant use cipher?’

  ‘To protect himself against men like you, presumably. Could you decode them?’

  ‘I could not – not in the time I had. I tell you, Chaloner, the man is no angel. These messages are probably reports from criminals, telling him dirty secrets about his rivals. I know for a fact that he consorts with low types, because I have seen him with them – in particular a thickset fellow with a scarred neck, who always visits after dark. Do you really object to us defrauding a man like that?’

  Chaloner shrugged. ‘It is none of my affair.’

  Scot regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Do you remember the letter sent anonymously to Bristol – the one that saw me placed in an awkward position and Dillon convicted of Webb’s murder? Well, it occurs to me that Behn might have sent it.’

  ‘Why? He has nothing to do with—’

  ‘He receives coded letters,’ snapped Scot. ‘So do not tell me he is innocent in the world of spying. I imagine he would love our intelligence services to be thrown into disarray, because it would allow him greater freedom to do whatever it is he does.’ He sighed impatiently. ‘You do not believe me.’

  ‘It is easier to cheat a man you despise than one you like – you are trying to convince yourself that he is unsavoury, not me. How can you bear him to touch Eaffrey, if she is your wife in all but name?’

  Scot was surprised by the question. ‘My previous wife slept with all manner of men to provide me with the secrets necessary for my work. If you were married, your woman would do the same.’

  ‘No,’ said Chaloner firmly. ‘She would not.’

  ‘When you are my age, you may think differently.’

  ‘The Guinea Company feast,’ said Chaloner suddenly. ‘You left early – or “too early to know what happened” in the discussion between Temple and Webb, to quote your own words. You said it was because the lice in Terrell’s wig were bothering you. Was it really to see Eaffrey?’

  Scot grinned ruefully. ‘It was a perfect opportunity. Behn is an influential member of the Guinea Company – there is a move afoot to make him Master – so we knew he would be there all night. I stayed at African House long enough to be noticed, then spent the rest of the night in Eaffrey’s arms, content in the knowledge that Behn had promised to use the other bedroom when he finally returned, so as not to wake her. Such occasions are rare, so must be seized with alacrity when they arise.’

  ‘I imagine his visits to Silence might provide you with a few.’

  Scot’s smile widened. ‘But not as many as we would like.’

  Friday dawned warm and clear. The sky was veiled with a thin gauze of cloud that soon burned away, and the sun shone on the chaos of spires and chimneys that was London. Chaloner walked to Ludgate, acutely aware that time was running out for Dillon. He cut through several alleys, emerging near the scruffy patch of land designated as the graveyard to St Bride’s Church, then picked his way along a path that ran parallel to the foetid sludge of the Fleet river. Kites and hawks pecked through the flotsam that had cast up upon its stinking banks, and rats scavenged in the deeper shadows. The stench of urine was powerful enough to sear the back of Chaloner’s throat, and it made his eyes water.

  He crossed the bridge and headed for the prison, noting how it stood in the shadow of mighty St Paul’s – the racket from the shops and stalls in the cathedral’s churchyard could be heard even above the rumble of iron cartwheels on the cobbles of Ludgate Hill. He loitered in the porch of little St Martin’s, opposite the gatehouse, until he spotted the warden who had taken him to see Sarsfeild. He left his hiding place and handed the man a shilling.

  ‘Sarsfeild,’ mused the warden, pocketing the coin. ‘Due to be executed tomorrow, but he beat us to it. The governor is furious, because it means we lost two of the three men due to die on Saturday. Sarsfeild was found dead in his cell – hanged with the laces from his own shirt. He done it himself.’

  ‘I was under the impression he wanted to live,’ said Chaloner. ‘He hoped someone would save him, because he said he was innocent.’

  ‘They are all innocent in there,’ said the warden wearily, jerking his thumb towards the prison walls. ‘But perhaps his priest convinced him that the time for lies was over. Vicars often have that effect on condemned men: they talk about Jesus and wicked hearts break. I seen it dozens of times.’

  ‘What vicar?’ asked Chaloner.

  ‘The Rector of St Dunstan-in-the-West.’ The warden screwed up his face as he fought to remember a name. ‘Willys – George Willys.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Like a priest – shabby black coat, broad-brimmed hat, shoes with holes. He wore a sword, I remember, which is unusual for a religious cove. It was hid under his cloak but I saw the tip.’

  ‘Was Sarsfeild alive after this vicar had left?’

  ‘I expect so, or he would have said something. Priests do not like it when prisoners die in the middle of evangelical sessions. It makes them feel they have wasted their time, because dead men cannot ponder redemption and that kind of thing.’

  In other words, he did not know, surmised Chaloner. ‘What time did this visit take place?’

  The warden scratched his oily pate. ‘Now you are asking. It was after three o’clock, because that was when we finished giving all the inmates their dinner.’

  ‘George Willys was dead himself by then. The man you admitted was an impostor.’

  ‘Well, he looked like a vicar,’ said the warden defensively. ‘He had a Bible and everything. I thought it was odd that the Rector of St Dunstan’s should come, when Sarsfeild hailed from the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, but it is not for me to question clerics.’

  ‘What happened to Sarsfeild’s body?’

  ‘The barber-surgeons had it. They needed one urgent, and they were lucky we had one going spare. It is not every day we have suicides. We are not Newgate.’

  ‘Why did they need it urgently?’

  ‘Apparently, a rich patron paid Mr Johnson a lot of money
for a Private Anatomy, but Mr Johnson did not have a corpse, so he used one that had been set aside for another surgeon called Wiseman. Wiseman was furious, and told Mr Johnson that if he did not procure a body immediately, he would end up on the cutting table himself. So we let Mr Johnson have Sarsfeild.’

  Thoughts teeming, Chaloner was about to visit Newgate, to see whether he could shake any more details from the aggravating Dillon – there was nothing like looming execution to concentrate the mind – when he met Holles. The colonel was striding purposefully along the spacious avenue called Old Bailey, and Chaloner greeted him warily, uncertain of the man and the status of their alliance.

  ‘May is still telling everyone that you started that fight in the Spares Gallery yesterday,’ said Holles without preamble.

  ‘Do you believe him?’ asked Chaloner.

  Holles grimaced. ‘It is getting harder to tell friend from foe these days, and you have never liked May, so it is possible that you provoked a struggle. And then there was Wiseman – he took your side, and that is what really turned me against you. You see, not long before your spat with May, Wiseman told me a filthy lie. So, my instinct was to distrust him a second time, too.’

  ‘What “filthy lie” did he tell you?’

  Holles looked pained. ‘I am fond of Maude from Hercules’s Pillars Alley, and Wiseman told me that Johan Behn took her to the New Exchange and bought her a brooch. It cannot be true, because Behn is courting Eaffrey Johnson. So, Wiseman was making up tales, just to upset me.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ asked Chaloner, wondering whether Behn had some perverse fascination with portly, middle-aged ladies, given that he seemed to appreciate Silence’s company, too.

  ‘He probably cannot help it – they are all liars in the medical profession. Johnson spouts untruths each time he opens his mouth – on Monday, he told me he fought with Prince Rupert at the Battle of Naseby, when I know for a fact that he spent his war apprenticed to a barber in Paternoster Row.’

  ‘What about Lisle? Does he lie, too?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. He is the only decent one among the lot of them. Incidentally, I examined the horse that killed my man yesterday. When it escaped, all the grooms were being lectured by Brodrick on the correct way to dress a mane, so none of them can be responsible for what I found.’

  ‘And what was that?’ asked Chaloner, when Holles paused for dramatic effect.

  ‘Someone had put a nail in its saddle, which cut it and made it buck.’

  Chaloner was not particularly surprised. ‘So, that means Willys’s murder was premeditated. Someone deliberately arranged a diversion, so no one would notice when he was stabbed.’

  ‘A murder was premeditated,’ corrected Holles. ‘You may have been the target, and the wrong man was killed. Or perhaps the killer intended to dispatch both of you, but ran out of time.’

  Chaloner would have done virtually anything to avoid setting foot inside Newgate Gaol again. Unfortunately, there was no one to go in his stead. Scot was due to meet Williamson, to discuss his brother’s release, and although he offered to visit Dillon as soon as he had finished, Chaloner felt the matter could not wait. Meanwhile, Thurloe had taken Leybourn off on some errand of his own, and no one at Lincoln’s Inn knew where they had gone.

  With a sigh of resignation, the spy turned his attention to the task in hand. He had no forged letter to the governor and no heavy purse, so this time he was obliged to rely on his wits. He purchased an old black coat and a ‘sugar-loaf ’ hat from a rag-picker – men who collected old clothes and sold them to the desperate – and borrowed a Bible from nearby Christchurch.

  ‘I am the Reverend May,’ he announced to the porter on duty at Newgate’s entrance, trying to quell the uneasy fluttering in his stomach. ‘From St Martin-inthe-Fields.’ He was not about to make the same mistake as the impostor who had killed Sarsfeild, by claiming the wrong parish. ‘I have come to speak privately to Mr Dillon.’

  ‘What about?’ demanded the guard.

  ‘His immortal soul,’ replied Chaloner loftily. He clasped his hands together, and raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘For, as it is written in the Holy Bible—’

  ‘All right,’ interrupted the guard. ‘I see your point. Follow me, but make it quick, because it is not right to waste too much of a man’s last day on religious claptrap, and he is trying to finish a book.’

  ‘He has accepted the inevitability of his death, then?’ asked Chaloner. ‘His soul will be—’

  ‘He thinks he is going to be saved,’ corrected the guard. ‘The reason he wants to finish the book is so he can return it to its owner before he heads to Ireland on Sunday. The governor is worried about tomorrow, and extra soldiers have been drafted in, ready to deal with any trouble from the crowd.’

  ‘Will the execution not take place, then?’

  The guard shrugged. ‘Dillon says not, and I have told my mother not to bother going. She hates it when she waits for hours and a hanging is cancelled. Dillon is a decent gent – generous with what he gives us – so do not squander too much of his time. Let him finish his reading.’

  Instead of being shown into the bleak interview room, Chaloner was conducted to Dillon’s cell, where the condemned man was not studying, but playing with a roll of silk. The chamber was larger than the rooms Chaloner rented in Fetter Lane, and the remains of the meal on the table was fit for a king. Dillon looked up as he entered, hat shading his face.

  ‘I am a gentleman, so entitled to be hanged with a silken rope,’ he explained with a chuckle. ‘Hemp, which is used for the common criminal, tends to stick, but silk slides easily, and I am assured it will strangle me all the sooner. The guards were kind enough to let me twist the noose myself.’

  ‘What about the book?’ asked the warden conversationally. ‘Finished it yet?’

  ‘No, but I am not in the mood for words. This vicar will make sure it goes back to the man who lent it to me, and I shall purchase my own copy before I sail for Ireland.’

  ‘If you are so sure of rescue, then why bother with the noose?’ asked Chaloner, when the guard had gone.

  ‘It gives me something to do, and I was never one for sitting idle. Fitz-Simons told me hanging is painless, because the rope pinches the nerves in the neck and deprives the victim of all feeling.’

  ‘It does not look painless to me.’ Chaloner disliked the spectacle afforded by public executions, but he had been unable to avoid them all. It was not a way he wanted to die himself.

  ‘You are trying to unnerve me, because of your friend Manning. You blame me for his death.’

  ‘You may learn about betrayal yourself tomorrow, when you find your salvation does not materialise, and that Fitz-Simons was mistaken when he said hanging does not hurt.’

  Dillon regarded him with dislike. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

  ‘Sarsfeild is dead,’ said Chaloner harshly. ‘Fanning is dead.’

  Dillon grimaced. ‘I know – and both were strangled. But they were different from me.’

  Chaloner sighed. ‘I have spent the last week trying to learn what really happened to Webb, but I am no further forward, despite my best efforts. And whatever you may think, I do not want to see an innocent man choke. Have you considered the possibility that your master cannot help you – that he has tried to secure your pardon but has been unsuccessful?’

  ‘No,’ said Dillon. ‘I trust him with my life.’

  ‘If it is Lord Clarendon, you will be disappointed. He would have worked through the law to release you, not promised some dramatic reprieve on a white charger. Thurloe may still be able to help, but he needs information – information only you can provide. Surely you can see it is sensible to devise a second plan to save yourself, lest the first one fails?’

  Dillon regarded him impassively. ‘What makes you think I am in Clarendon’s pay?’

  ‘You were seen in Worcester House with him, very late one night.’

  ‘I visit the homes of many powerful men, but
that does not mean I work for them.’

  Chaloner was losing patience. Newgate made his hands shake, his heart pound and his stomach churn, and if Dillon did not want his help, then he did not see why he should subject himself to more of it. He tried one last time. ‘I need the answers to two questions if Thurloe is to earn your acquittal.’

  ‘Thurloe,’ said Dillon meditatively. ‘I betrayed him when I changed sides during the Commonwealth, yet he refuses to abandon me now. Why?’

  ‘Because he is a good man. His principles baulk at seeing someone hang for a crime he did not commit, and he cares for all his people, even the treacherous ones.’

  ‘Yes,’ mused Dillon softly. ‘He always was the best of us. Very well. Ask your two questions.’

  ‘Who killed Webb? And was his murder anything to do with the Castle Plot?’

  Dillon was silent for so long that Chaloner stood to leave.

  ‘I did not stab Webb,’ said Dillon softly, glancing at the door to make sure he would not be overheard, ‘but I was there when it happened. I distracted him while Fanning delivered the fatal blow. I was following orders.’

  Now Chaloner was not sure whether to believe him. ‘Willys said you and he were roaring drunk in the Dolphin tavern on the night of the murder, and incapable of killing anyone. And Thurloe said you were a Quaker, vehemently opposed to violence. As Manning can attest.’

  ‘It was Willys who was drunk. He was face-down on the table when the message came. It offered me a respectable sum for sullying my hands with Webb’s blood – hence my comfort here in Newgate – but I would have dispatched the man for no payment at all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You think me shallow, with no conscience, but you are wrong. I am a Quaker, although perhaps not a very good one, and I deplore slavery. It was a pleasure to play a role in murdering that monster – a man who made himself rich on the proceeds of forced labour.’

  ‘You were seen at the Guinea Company dinner, although you said you were not there—’

  ‘Fanning and I left early, because I could not bear to be in the same room as Webb. When Webb tried to stop us, I told him what I thought of his ship and its cargo, and we argued. Then I went to meet Willys at the Dolphin and the note arrived. I left Willys slumbering, sent word to Fanning to meet me, dispensed with Webb, and returned to the Dolphin to put Willys to bed.’