The Westminster Poisoner: Chaloner's Fourth Exploit in Restoration London (Thomas Chaloner Book 4)

by Susanna Gregory

  ‘Turner will be trapped with her for hours now,’ Haddon was saying. ‘She has a voracious appetite for pretty men. And that works to our advantage, because as long as he frolics, he cannot investigate.’

  ‘Our advantage?’

  ‘I have five pounds wagered that you will catch the killer before he does,’ explained Haddon, bending to pet his dogs. ‘The Earl believes Turner will win. However, his preference for the colonel has nothing to do with who is the better investigator – it is based on the fact that Turner is beginning to accept Greene as the killer.’

  ‘And the Earl wants a solution that proves him right,’ said Chaloner gloomily.

  ‘No – he wants a solution that is fast,’ corrected Haddon. ‘But I would rather the enquiry took longer and the real culprit is exposed, so I am backing you.’

  ‘Then let us hope it does not cost you five pounds.’

  ‘It had better not, because I cannot afford it. Incidentally, you will find the Earl in a sour mood this morning, because Brodrick played his Turkish-harem trick last night – our master arrived to find his chambers bedecked in billowing silk and forty harlots. So, let us hope the Lord of Misrule moves to other targets now. Come along, precious ones. We do not want your little paws chilled on these nasty cold stones.’

  Chaloner had only taken a few steps towards the Earl’s offices when he spotted Barbara Chiffinch. He went to speak to her, wondering what it was about her that Hannah so disliked. Barbara was married to Will Chiffinch, a courtier of infamous depravity who was said to procure women for the King when his mistresses were unavailable. Barbara was not depraved, though, and led a perfectly respectable life. It was said that she and her husband had not shared the same bed in forty years.

  ‘I have been looking for you, Tom,’ she said as he approached. She was a comfortable, matronly woman with grey hair, an ample bosom and hazel eyes that glowed with intelligence. ‘Turner tells me your Earl has employed him as a spy. Have you been dismissed, then?’

  ‘Not yet – but I will be, if I cannot catch this clerk-killer and locate the King’s stolen statue.’

  Barbara was thoughtful. ‘There is all manner of gossip about both, but no one has any idea who the culprits might be. However, I can tell you one place to go for clues: to Temperance North.’

  Chaloner was puzzled. Temperance – a friend of his – ran a stylish ‘gentlemen’s club’ in Hercules’ Pillars Alley, near The Strand. ‘What does she have to do with dead clerks and missing art?’

  ‘My husband patronises her establishment, and he was waxing lyrical about an evening he enjoyed there a couple of weeks ago, when he said something odd. Apparently, Temperance had quizzed him about Bernini – the sculptor who carved the bust. She had never expressed an interest in art before, and he was delighted with himself for feeding her a lot of bogus information.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘He told her Bernini is a Swedish hermaphrodite, whose hobbies include rope-dancing and keeping hedgehogs. But that is beside the point – which is, what prompted her questions in the first place?’

  ‘Perhaps she heard a Bernini masterpiece was stolen from the King,’ suggested Chaloner, still not sure what she was trying to tell him.

  ‘But this discussion occurred before the statue went missing. Of course, it may mean nothing, but that is for you to decide. Have you heard the news this morning? Poor Edward Jones is drowned.’

  ‘What about Williamson’s clerk, Swaddell?’ asked Chaloner. ‘Is he drowned, too?’

  Barbara raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘No, but he is missing. I shall not ask whether you had anything to do with it, but I hope not, for your sake. Williamson is livid.’

  ‘Why? What does Swaddell do that his other spies cannot?’

  Barbara’s eyebrows went up a second time. ‘You do not know? Swaddell is his assassin, the man who wields knives in dark alleys. Williamson is by the gate, look, interrogating people about the fellow’s whereabouts as they pass. He is speaking to Lady Muskerry at the moment, although he should not expect sensible answers from her, poor lamb. She is far too silly.’

  Chaloner watched the Spymaster grab the woman by the arm and shake her. She looked frightened, and when she started to cry, he was tempted to intervene. Barbara stopped him.

  ‘Your gallantry is commendable but misguided. Do not worry about Muskerry – she will have forgotten Williamson exists by the time she reaches the other side of the courtyard, while he will not appreciate being berated for ungentlemanly behaviour. Damn it! Now he is coming towards us.’

  ‘I hoped I might run into you, Chaloner,’ said Williamson unpleasantly. ‘Swaddell is missing, and I am told you and he dined together in Hell on Tuesday – the night he disappeared. Where is he?’

  Chaloner shrugged. ‘I really have no idea,’ he answered truthfully. ‘And we did not dine together – we sat at opposite ends of a table, separated by a dozen clerks.’

  ‘I have been told that, too,’ said Williamson. ‘By Neale and Matthias Lea, who were also there.’

  It was not a good idea to make free with the names of informants, and once again, Chaloner was unimpressed by the man’s approach to intelligencing; his loose tongue was likely to see people killed. But he said nothing, and it was Barbara who broke the uncomfortable silence that followed.

  ‘Swaddell is a loathsome fellow, and he will not be missed by decent folk.’

  ‘He will be missed by me,’ declared Williamson.

  ‘Point proven,’ said Barbara coldly. ‘But Thomas has an alibi for Tuesday, so leave him alone.’

  Williamson sneered at her. ‘What alibi? You have not entertained a man in your bed for decades, so do not expect me to believe you made an exception for him.’

  Chaloner regarded him with dislike. ‘Such vile remarks are hardly appropriate for a government minister to—’

  But Barbara put a hand on his shoulder, to stop him. ‘His alibi is the Queen, if you must know,’ she said, addressing the angry Spymaster. ‘She told me she met him on a matter of business. Ask her, if you do not believe me.’

  Williamson regarded her icily. ‘Oh, I shall. But he cannot have been with her all night, and it takes but a moment to slip a dagger in a man’s gizzard and toss his body in the river – and I should know.’

  ‘Then perhaps your time would be better spent questioning your own people,’ said Barbara tartly. ‘You hire some very disreputable villains, so ask them what has happened to your assassin.’

  Williamson ignored her, and fixed Chaloner with glittering eyes. ‘Bring me Swaddell, or I shall assume the obvious – that you killed him.’

  ‘But I barely knew him,’ objected Chaloner indignantly. ‘Why would I mean him harm?’

  ‘So you say,’ snarled Williamson. ‘Find him, or suffer the consequences.’

  ‘Take no notice,’ said Barbara, as the Spymaster stalked away to interrogate someone else. ‘He is so agitated by Swaddell’s disappearance that he is threatening anyone and everyone. Of course, he is not so much afraid that Swaddell is dead, as that he might still be alive.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that Swaddell is said to have undertaken some very dark tasks for our Spymaster, tasks that Williamson will not want revealed to anyone else. He will relax when Swaddell’s corpse appears.’

  ‘And if it does not?’

  ‘Then I suspect the uncertainty will render him unpredictable and dangerous.’

  Edward Jones, courtier and gourmand, was in the charnel house, awaiting collection by his next of kin. Unfortunately, his next of kin took one look at the mammoth cadaver and decided it could not be safely toted around the city, and asked Kersey to care for it until the funeral. Surgeon Wiseman offered to reduce the scale of the problem, but his services were rejected in no uncertain terms – Jones had sons, and although they had not been close to their father, they still took their filial duties seriously.

  The mortuary boasted two reception rooms, as well as the long
, low hall in which bodies were stored. One was Kersey’s office, and the other was a surprisingly tastefully decorated chamber used for explaining formalities to grieving relatives. Kersey introduced Jones’s sons to Chaloner in the latter, when the spy said he had come to convey the Lord Chancellor’s sympathy to them. They had just arrived from the country, and it did not take many minutes for Chaloner to ascertain that they knew virtually nothing about their father or his life in London.

  ‘I would not accept the post of Yeoman of the Household Kitchen for a kingdom,’ said one with a shudder. ‘I hope to God it is not hereditary, because I could never live in White Hall.’

  ‘It is full of rogues,’ agreed the other, blithely oblivious to the fact that such an opinion might be construed as treason. ‘All they do is eat and enjoy orgies. Father was never so fat when he lived at home.’

  ‘I see,’ said Chaloner, although he suspected that such a monstrous girth was a lot more than three years in the making, so the Royalist government could not be held solely responsible for its development. ‘I do not suppose you know if he owned any rings, do you?’

  ‘Oh, lots,’ replied the eldest carelessly. ‘Most are in a box at home, but Mr Kersey has just given us the ones he was wearing when he died. He had a particular penchant for green ones.’

  ‘They were all green,’ added his brother. ‘Except for the ones that were red.’

  ‘His sons cannot be suspects for pushing him in the river,’ said Kersey to Chaloner, after he had shown them out. He started to gnaw on something that looked like a stick of dried meat, although the spy could not bring himself to study it too closely. ‘They told me earlier that they have recently inherited a fortune from an uncle, which means they have no need to pick off a father.’

  ‘You think Jones was unlawfully killed?’ asked Chaloner uncomfortably. He hoped no one had seen him follow Jones – and Swaddell – into the alley, because fending off accusations of murder would not be easy. He did not think anyone had been watching him, but could not be certain.

  Kersey jerked a thumb towards the dark recesses of his odoriferous hall, where Surgeon Wiseman could be seen hovering over a corpse like a massive red bird of prey. ‘That is the kind of question you should be asking him. Were you telling the truth when you said the Earl sent you to offer Jones’s kin his condolences? Because if you are actually here to admire the corpse, it will cost you threepence.’

  Chaloner handed over the coins, which Kersey added to a bulging purse. Then the spy walked with soft-footed tread to stand behind Wiseman.

  ‘Damn it, Chaloner!’ cried Wiseman, whipping around in alarm at the cough so close to his shoulder. ‘That is not a wise thing to do when a fellow is holding a scalpel.’

  Chaloner looked in distaste at what the surgeon was doing. ‘I thought permission to make off with parts of Jones had been denied.’

  ‘This is too good an opportunity to miss.’ Wiseman’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Look at the size of him! I would be negligent to let him go to his grave without furthering medical research, and I am doing no harm.’

  ‘I am not sure Jones would agree,’ said Chaloner uneasily. He thought, but did not say that Wiseman represented no mean specimen himself, with his height and muscular bulk. ‘You will be hanged if you are caught chopping up courtiers without the permission of their relatives. There are those who think anatomy is a dark art, and you take too much pleasure in it.’

  ‘There is nothing wrong with enjoying the pursuit of knowledge,’ declared Wiseman, lending a grandeur to his actions Chaloner felt was undeserved. ‘Would you like to see something interesting?’

  ‘Not if it has anything to do with his innards.’

  ‘He drowned.’ The surgeon leaned on Jones’s chest and pushed down, pointing to the foam that began to ooze from the corpse’s mouth. ‘You only ever get that when the lungs are waterlogged. And they are only waterlogged if a man is trying to breathe underwater.’

  ‘He was found in the river. Of course he drowned.’

  ‘But he did not go easily.’ Wiseman picked up a hand. ‘Look at these broken nails – he fought violently to save himself. And there is a hole in his shoulder that may have been made by a crossbow bolt.’

  Chaloner already knew all this. ‘I imagine most men who fall in the Thames struggle.’

  Wiseman gave his superior smile. ‘But here is the interesting part: he could have struggled all he liked and still never clawed his way to safety. He sank like a stone. And do you want to know why?’

  He unbuttoned Jones’s coat and pulled aside the left-hand flap to reveal a number of pockets in the lining. Each pocket held a purse, and each purse contained ten gold pieces. Then the surgeon opened the right-hand flap, and repeated the process until a mound of bright discs lay on the table.

  ‘Is this interesting enough for you?’ he smirked.

  Chaloner picked up a coin and weighed it in his hand. It was heavy, and he imagined it was worth a significant amount of money. ‘It is unexpected,’ he said, in something of an understatement.

  The surgeon chuckled. ‘Then what about this?’

  Jones was wearing a vest under his coat, and Chaloner gaped when Wiseman revealed a second lair of hidden pockets. He went to lock the door, not liking the notion that someone might come in and find them with such vast riches, then joined the search for more. There were secret pouches in Jones’s breeches, boots, the sash that held his sword, and even in the lace at his throat and wrists.

  ‘I am surprised he could move,’ Chaloner said when they had finished. ‘No wonder he was so heavy when I … No wonder he sank.’

  ‘No wonder indeed. How much do you think it is worth?’

  Chaloner shrugged. ‘Thousands of pounds. What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘Me?’ Wiseman was alarmed. ‘I want no part of it! I wager anything you like that he did not come by this legally, or he would not have felt compelled to carry it about on his person. It is lucky you happened by, because I was in a quandary regarding what to do.’

  ‘You would not confide in Kersey? You must have some kind of understanding with him, because I doubt anyone else would let you stay in here unattended, knowing what you are likely to do.’

  ‘He gives me access to interesting corpses, and I invite him to dine at Chyrurgeons’ Hall on occasion – as you know, the Company of Barber-Surgeons puts on some very sumptuous feasts. That is the nature of our arrangement. However, he is not a man I would approach for advice about large sums of money.’

  ‘Well, this belongs to Jones’s sons, just like the jewellery that was removed from his corpse.’

  ‘Only if he acquired it honestly, which I seriously doubt. Besides, it would be unkind to foist this kind of fortune on those hapless bumpkins – it is likely to see them killed.’

  ‘Then I will give it to Bulteel to look after until we can identify its rightful owner. He has safe places for treasure, and can be trusted not to steal it – which cannot be said for many clerks at White Hall. Of course, I will have to ask him not to mention it to Williamson.’

  ‘Yes, we do not want him near it,’ agreed Wiseman. ‘He is an avaricious devil, and fearfully dishonest. It is hard to see him as a fellow intellectual.’

  Chaloner looked around, and his eye lit on a pile of sacks – roughly made bags used for storing a corpse’s personal effects. He took one and began loading the gold into it. ‘Have you heard of anyone else being washed up by the river today? Swaddell is missing, and Williamson wants me to find him.’

  ‘I usually look at what the river spits out – I am always alert for decent specimens – but there was no Swaddell. Of course, Father Thames does not always relinquish his catches immediately. It might be weeks before Swaddell appears – if ever. What makes you think he drowned?’

  ‘He and Jones ate in the same cookhouse on Tuesday,’ replied Chaloner vaguely.

  ‘Perhaps Swaddell knew how Jones padded out his already-rotund figure,’ suggested Wiseman. ‘I
would not put it past the little weasel. Now there is a corpse I would not touch with a bargepole. Who knows what might come slithering out once you had it open.’

  It was an unsettling image, and told Chaloner that he had had enough of the surgeon’s company for one day. He left him to his illicit anatomising, and lugged the sack to the Earl’s offices, praying that the material would hold and that a fortune in gold would not suddenly burst all over the street.

  Bulteel was aghast when he saw what the spy wanted him to hide. ‘Are you insane?’ he hissed angrily. ‘God alone knows how Jones laid hold of all this, but it cannot have been legitimate.’

  ‘No one knows we have it except Wiseman. He can be trusted to say nothing.’

  Bulteel nodded reluctantly. ‘Yes, he can, but my office is no longer the safe haven it was, not with Haddon prowling around. He often has his dogs with him, and one might sniff out this hoard.’

  ‘I think they prefer the scent of food to precious metals, and will be more likely to lead him to one of your wife’s cakes.’ Chaloner looked around hopefully. It had been a while since breakfast.

  But Bulteel’s attention was on the money. ‘I wonder if Jones was drowned deliberately – someone knew he had a fortune and wanted him dead, so he could get it for himself.’

  ‘If that were the case, the killer would have removed the purses before abandoning the body,’ said Chaloner, choosing his words with care.

  Bulteel gave a crafty smile and wagged a finger at him. ‘But that assumes the culprit knew where Jones kept them, and you must admit that carrying such a vast sum in hidden pockets is an odd thing to do – you cannot blame a killer for not thinking to search the corpse. Or perhaps the weight of the gold meant Jones sank so fast that the killer had no chance to grab him.’