The King's Return: (Thomas Hill 3) (Thomas Hill Novels)

by Andrew Swanston

  Thomas and Charles accompanied Williamson to his carriage. ‘John Winter was a good man,’ he said quietly. His voice trembled and he was clearly shaken.

  In the dining room Chandle Stoner was gallantly offering comfort to the ladies, none of whom needed much comfort. Indeed, Louise d’Entrevaux looked positively uninterested.

  ‘I have never seen Joseph so flustered,’ said Charles. ‘Do stay, though. There’s no point in letting this cheesecake go to waste.’

  ‘Yes, do stay,’ agreed Mary. ‘The cake was made with rosewater. I’m sure you’ll like it.’

  Charles cut thin slices for the ladies and thicker ones for the gentlemen. ‘There you are. Eat up and then we’ll share a bottle of brandy. A new consignment arrived yesterday from France. I am keen to try it.’

  An hour later they were sitting around the fire with the brandy bottle to hand. Thomas had learned much about Chandle Stoner, nothing about his sister and very little about Madeleine Stewart. Other than that she was unmarried and lived with her housekeeper in a small house near Fleet Street, he was none the wiser. He made one last try. ‘Have you relatives in London, Miss Stewart?’

  ‘Only Joseph.’

  ‘Perhaps I shall have the pleasure of meeting you again while I am in London.’ This, at least, produced a smile.

  ‘I expect so. London may be large but we all move in such small circles that I daresay we shall run into each other again.’ Madeleine turned to Mary. ‘I think I should be getting home now, Mary.’

  ‘Would you like one of the gentlemen to escort you?’

  Thomas opened his mouth to speak. He was too late.

  ‘We will escort you back with pleasure,’ said Stoner. ‘Why not travel in our carriage? Yours can follow behind and we will go on after seeing you home.’

  ‘Thank you, Chandle. That would be kind. These murders have made me quite nervous.’ Thomas bit his tongue. Beaten to it by Stoner. Damned irritating.

  ‘Well,’ said Mary, when they had left, ‘a day that starts with a coronation and ends with a murder does not come along all that often. It has quite exhausted me and I shall leave you gentlemen to the brandy.’

  When she had retired, Thomas asked Charles about his fellow guests.

  ‘Madeleine Stewart is a dear friend of Mary,’ said Charles. ‘She must be about thirty-five, despite looking twenty, and no one can understand why she has never married. She has never said a word about it. Chandle Stoner is a sound fellow. A little pompous, I grant you, but very astute in business. He’s done well for us. His dull sister I can tell you nothing about. I wonder he asked to bring her. Joseph Williamson is much more important than he chooses to admit. The king holds him in high regard. What did you make of him?’

  ‘An intelligent man. He seemed most interested in my work with codes. I thought Madeleine Stewart delightful. You should tell Mary, however, that if the lady has resisted all approaches so far she’s unlikely to take much notice of one from me.’

  Charles laughed. ‘You’re right, my friend. Why would she be interested in an ageing cryptographer who’s been imprisoned twice and deported once?’

  ‘Why indeed?’

  CHAPTER 4

  THOMAS AND MARY arrived at the Salisbury Court Theatre a few minutes before the performance was due to begin. They hurried past the press of beggars, cutpurses and urchins who had gathered to take their chances with the theatre-goers, to the theatre entrance, where a plaque on the wall informed them that it had been known previously as the Whitefriars Theatre and before that had been the site of a Carmelite monastery. Thomas grinned at the thought. Players for prayers – a sign of the times.

  He produced the money to pay for their seats – while most of the audience would stand, a few would pay the extra cost of a seat – and Mary took his arm. They wriggled and elbowed their way through the crowd to their places in the middle of a row of raised chairs at the back.

  It was a small theatre, big enough for no more than a hundred or so, and unlike the open theatres in the city, protected from the weather by a roof. Candles had been lit and placed on sconces around the walls. ‘Intimate’ and ‘noxious’ were the words that occurred to Thomas. Even from the back they would see the features of the players clearly, but a hundred bodies packed together like stalks of corn in a field were producing a fearsome stench. Thomas hoped the play would make up for it.

  It did not. He managed to pay attention for the first two acts but by the middle of the third his mind was wandering. Three brutal murders – one victim a harmless old man, the others Williamson’s employees. Could there be more to them than robbery? Was there a connection between them, and if so, what? Or was the murder of Babb just a coincidence?

  He was jolted back to the present by a sudden commotion in the audience below them. On the stage Deflores had cut off Alonzo’s finger to get at his ring and was holding up the bloody digit for the audience’s inspection. A woman in the middle of the pit had fainted at the sight and those nearby were trying to clear a space around her. At such a dramatic moment, however, the audience behind her did not care to be cleared away and were standing their ground. A scuffle broke out and in no time fists were flying and women were shrieking. A fat man was pushed from behind and fell. Two or three others stumbled over him and were struggling to get up. In seconds, the play was forgotten and all semblance of order had disappeared.

  While the actors quietly left the stage – perhaps being accustomed to such things – the commotion turned to panic. The audience surged towards the back of the pit where a narrow gangway between the raised seats led to the front entrance. Bodies desperately tried to push through spaces that did not exist and were shoved back by other bodies. Some of those with seats left the platform and joined the melee, getting nowhere and making matters worse. ‘Better stay put,’ breathed Thomas into Mary’s ear, putting an arm around her. Mary nodded and they stood together on the platform, waiting for the crush to ease and the panic to subside.

  The crush, however, did not ease. Panic became chaos. A tall man reached over the rail and grabbed a chair from the platform. He smashed it on the floor and flayed those around him with a leg. Two others turned on the man, knocked him down and kicked him about the head. There was no sign of the crowd thinning and Thomas realized that the front entrance must in some way be blocked. If so, things could only get worse. Theatres with wooden walls and ceilings were notorious fire traps and if a candle fell or the ash from a pipe was tipped out, chaos might become conflagration.

  ‘Don’t let go,’ shouted Thomas, taking Mary by the hand and leading her to the end of the platform furthest from the door. He hopped over the rail and reached back to help Mary do the same. Without hesitating, she hitched up her skirts and clambered over. The fight for the door had left a narrow gap along the wall. They inched their way along it towards the stage, Thomas using his feet and elbows to widen the gap, while Mary hung on grimly to the collar of his coat. They had almost reached the stage when a flying fist caught Thomas in the eye and sent him sprawling, leaving Mary unprotected. Thomas took only a few seconds to recover his senses and get to his feet, but in those seconds Mary had disappeared, swallowed up by the press of bodies trying to get out. He backed against the wall and strained to catch a glimpse of her. A few determined kicks and he would get to her. But there was no sign of her.

  He forced his path to the stage, jumped up and found his way around the back to a narrow passage with two doors leading off it. The first door opened into a room full of costumes, the second into a tiny bedchamber. He followed the passage to where it turned sharply to the right, and saw a weak light coming from under another door. He pushed it open and found himself in a small courtyard surrounded by a high wall, in which there was a single, very low door. He crouched to get through it, and ran round behind a short row of houses to Fleet Street and back down to Salisbury Court.

  A small crowd had gathered outside the theatre entrance, where a man with a large ring of keys was trying each of them in turn in t
he lock. Although the cries from the audience inside could be heard clearly, the man appeared to be in no hurry. A few of the players had joined the onlookers but there was nothing much they could do other than stand and watch. Thomas tapped a player on the shoulder. ‘Could we not get them out through the back?’ he asked.

  Alonzo shrugged theatrically. ‘If you’ve seen the back way out, it’s not worth trying, even if they can be made to listen. Audiences are the same everywhere. Herds, flocks, swarms, audiences. Just the same.’

  ‘Why is this door locked?’

  ‘I do not know. It should not be.’

  The man with the keys was still trying each one in turn and showing no inclination to hurry. Thomas stepped forward and grabbed the keys from him. ‘For God’s sake, man, there are women in there. We must make haste.’

  Thomas tried a key which did not turn in the lock. He tried another. That too would not turn. The third, however, did and he heard the lock slide open. But when he pushed the door it barely moved. The press of bodies against it was too great. Two burly men from the crowd came forward and put their shoulders to it. Thomas shouted for those inside to make way and gradually the door opened enough for the first person to slip through. Once a few were out, it became easier and a trickle of dishevelled theatre-goers soon became a steady stream.

  Thomas stood to one side, watching them leave and waiting for Mary to appear. He saw nothing more serious than cuts and bruises and frayed tempers, and expected her to be in one piece. But when the stream dried up, she had not appeared. He rushed inside and looked around the empty theatre. He clambered on stage and around the back. He looked in the bedchamber and the costumes room. Still no sign. He turned back and went outside. Perhaps he had missed her.

  By then the only people left in the court were the group of players and Mary, looking not the slightest bit put out and chatting happily to Alonzo. ‘There you are, Thomas,’ she said when she saw him. ‘Oh dear, I fear your eye will spoil your looks for several days.’

  Thomas had forgotten his eye and put his hand to it. It was swollen and tender. ‘Never mind my eye, madam. Where have you been, may I enquire?’

  ‘Calme-toi, Thomas. I left by the back door as I imagine you intended me to. I could not reach you and I knew you would follow me.’

  ‘Mary . . .’

  ‘Tush, Thomas, all’s well that ends well.’ She gestured to Alonzo. ‘This gentleman tells me it is not uncommon for his finger to cause problems in the audience and the players have agreed that if it does, they will leave the stage quietly until order has been restored.’

  ‘On this occasion, however,’ said Alonzo, ‘order was not restored, so we all left through the yard. God knows why the door was locked.’ That reminded Thomas of the man with the keys. He had struggled to find the right one, but Thomas had got it at only the third attempt. Surely even a drunken oaf could have done better. He looked around. The man had disappeared.

  ‘Come along, Thomas,’ said Mary brightly, ‘we must take you home and bathe your eye. Charles will be most amused to hear of our adventure. Goodbye, sir. Perhaps we shall come to the play again and hope to see it all.’

  Alonzo swept off his hat and bowed extravagantly. ‘I do hope so, madam.’

  ‘Another conquest, Mrs Carrington,’ muttered Thomas as they walked back to Piccadilly, ‘and if you so much as hint that I was knocked down and lost you, your husband will hear of it.’

  Mary laughed. ‘Be assured, sir, that he will indeed hear of it, because I shall tell him myself. It does him good to be jealous from time to time.’

  They found Charles sitting in front of the fire, a glass in his hand. ‘How was the play?’ he asked, slurring his words a little. ‘You’re home earlier than expected.’

  ‘I found the first half a trifle slow,’ replied Thomas, ‘but it warmed up later.’

  ‘And you, my dear, did you enjoy it?’

  ‘It was unexpected.’

  Charles beamed at them. Then he noticed Thomas’s eye. ‘Are you sure it was the theatre and not a prizefight? Your escort appears somewhat the worse for wear.’

  ‘Quite sure,’ replied Thomas, with a glare at Mary. ‘There was a minor disturbance, nothing more.’

  Charles nodded, refilled his glass and patted his stomach. ‘I, too, had a good evening. Chandle is full of confidence about the venture. He even suggested that we increase our investment.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’ asked Mary.

  ‘I said we would consider it.’

  That night, after soothing his eye with a cold compress, Thomas thought of Plato. Life must be lived as a play, the great philosopher had said. Surely he had meant a play with a beginning, a middle and an end, not one cut short by fear and panic. If Thomas’s visit to London was an act in his own play, he hoped it would be a good deal less dramatic than a Greek tragedy.

  CHAPTER 5

  THREE DAYS LATER, Thomas decided to visit an apothecary who offered an efficaceous remedy for gout; having tried potions and salves supplied by any number of charlatans – so far with little success – he hoped for something better from an apothecary in Cheapside, of whom he had heard good reports. He sometimes thought that gout was the one thing he had in common with the late Lord Protector. At least the walk would give him an opportunity to see the city for himself, to buy a news sheet and perhaps to visit one of the new coffee houses.

  Lavender handkerchief pressed to his nose and purse tucked safely inside his shirt, he strolled slowly along the Strand and Fleet Street, the better to take in the noise and bustle. In the Strand, he was accosted by a pair of well-dressed young gentlemen, neither of whom could have drawn a sober breath since the eve of the coronation, and forced to toast the new king with a drink from their bottles. Halfway along Fleet Street, he passed a couple noisily copulating in a doorway, and on Ludgate Hill he stopped to buy a stick of sugar from a street vendor. The coins were barely out of his purse before he found himself surrounded by insistent vendors of pastries, herrings, garlic, milk, ale, daffodils and the Lord only knew what else. He shouldered his way past them, up the hill and through the narrow streets towards Cheapside.

  In Bread Street he declined an offer from a girl who could not have been much more than twelve years old. Partially covered in filthy rags, her face and hair streaked with the grime of a hundred coal fires, bare-footed and bare-headed, she would be lucky to see another Christmas. As the Puritans had abolished Christmas fourteen years earlier, she could never have seen one. He was reminded of the filth and squalor he had witnessed in Oxford at the start of the war. Beggars and whores, mutilation, disease, death. Not wishing to dwell on that terrible time, he put it out of his mind and hurried on.

  Streeter’s Apothecary stood at the junction of Cheapside and Bow Lane. Thomas paid for a small jar of Master Streeter’s mixture of honey, rosemary, goat droppings and his ‘particular ingredient, imported at great cost from the island of Jamaica’, put it in his pocket and set off along Poultry and Cornmarket to Threadneedle Street. There he bought the day’s news sheet from a vendor and found a seat at a small table in Turrell’s coffee house near the church of St Katharine Cree. He ordered a dish of Turkish coffee for a penny and spread the news sheet on the table.

  The murder of John Winter was reported on the front page. His body had been found in the evening of the day of the coronation, in the graveyard of St Olave’s church. The coroner, Seymour Manners, had inspected the body and judged the cause of death to have been strangulation. The deceased’s identity had been established by an inscribed silver watch found in his coat pocket. As the dead man carried no money the coroner had expressed the view that robbery was certainly the motive, the thief having been disturbed before he could remove the watch.

  The writer of the article speculated about the reason for Mr Winter being in such a place, suggesting that he might have overdone his celebrations on coronation day and lost his way among the tangle of streets in that part of the city. He made no mention of the murders of Mat
thew Smith or Sir Montford Babb.

  Thomas was surprised that the coroner had not suggested a possible connection between the three murders – all the victims being well-to-do and respectable men, robbed and killed in unsavoury parts of the city – and wondered if Williamson’s damning description of Seymour Manners might be on the mark. He finished the news sheet, left the coffee house and made his way back to Piccadilly. This time he did not stop to buy a sugar stick or a pie and was in the Carringtons’ sitting room within the hour. He had just sat down and was about to apply the salve to his foot when Smythe came in with the silver letter tray.

  ‘A letter arrived for you no more than a few minutes ago, Mr Hill. The boy was instructed to wait for your reply. He’s in the kitchen.’

  Thomas broke the seal and read the letter. It was brief.

  For the personal attention of Thomas Hill Esquire

  I should be much obliged if you would call on me tomorrow morning. At ten o’clock, if that is convenient. I have a matter of importance to discuss and upon which I should value your opinion. Please inform the courier if this will be convenient.

  Your respectful servant,

  Joseph Williamson, Chancery Lane

  Thomas could think of no reason why it would be inconvenient. ‘Thank you, John. Please tell the boy that I shall call as requested.’ Smythe bowed low and went to do so.

  Well now, Thomas, he wondered, what could Joseph Williamson, officer in the department of the secretary of state and adviser to His Majesty King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland, want to discuss with the likes of you?

  When he arrived at Joseph Williamson’s house in Chancery Lane at five minutes before ten o’clock the next morning, Thomas was shown by a steward into a large room which evidently served as both library and study. Books covered three walls from floor to ceiling, two library chairs stood either side of a coal fire and heavy curtains, half drawn back to allow some light into the room, hung at the windows.