Chaloner drew his gun and set off after him, trailing him and his companions until they were well out of sight of the main road, lest some passer-by thought to interfere. Then he made his move.
‘Put your hands in the air,’ he ordered softly. ‘Or I will shoot.’
Griffith whirled around, and his eyes widened in shock when he saw the dag. ‘Chaloner! What do you think you are doing? You should have left London hours ago. What is wrong with you? Do you want to be hanged as a spy?’
One of the ruffians started to edge away, so Chaloner threw one of the knives he had taken from Williamson’s dead guard. It entered the man’s thigh, causing him to curse vilely as he slid to the ground, both hands clutching the wound.
‘Stay where you are,’ he told the other villain. The man saw he meant it, and quickly raised his hands. Chaloner turned back to Griffith. ‘I want my wife back.’
‘Your wife?’ echoed Griffith. The mince was back in his movements, but Chaloner was not deceived. ‘What makes you think I—’
Chaloner darted forward and pressed the gun against Griffith’s temple. ‘I am not interested in a debate. Tell me where she is.’
‘Wait!’ cried Griffith in alarm. ‘If you kill me, you will never find her.’
Chaloner took the gun from Griffith’s head and aimed it at his middle instead. ‘Tell me.’
Griffith paled. As a soldier, he knew what it meant to be gut-shot. ‘Is this about my little lie? That I am not Griffith, and do not hale from Buckinghamshire? I can explain!’
‘I am not interested. Where are Hannah and Thurloe?’
‘The real Griffith died in my arms years ago, after regaling me with tales of his escapades in the wars. I admit to that deception. And I will even admit to organising the watch on your home – my “cousin” brays about your skills constantly, so keeping you under observation seemed a wise precaution. I searched it to look for any reports you might have written for the Earl—’
Chaloner’s finger tightened on the trigger. ‘Hannah and Thurloe.’
‘It was me who slipped into Newgate, too,’ Griffith went on, a little desperately. ‘I am good at disguises. I pretended to be a warden, and getting into Calais was easy.’
‘I am sure it was, but did you have to murder Swan and Swallow so horribly?’
Griffith looked away, and Chaloner was surprised to see the incident haunted him. ‘It was not my idea, it was Falcon’s. He said we needed to make people see he is not someone to be crossed.’
Chaloner narrowed his eyes. ‘Do not lie. You are Falcon.’
‘Me?’ Griffith started to laugh. ‘I am merely his servant. I was—’
‘I do not believe you,’ snapped Chaloner. ‘So, for the last time, where are they?’
‘Stop!’ shouted Griffith, when Chaloner began to squeeze the trigger. ‘I am Williamson’s spy, working for England against the Dutch. Kill me, and you damage your country. My lies have been for England, and are a necessary part of my disguise.’
Chaloner was not sure what happened next, only that the man he had injured had hauled the dagger from his leg and lobbed it. He ducked instinctively and it missed, but Griffith’s reactions were frighteningly fast. He whipped his sword from its scabbard, and while Chaloner’s attention was on him, the second ruffian knocked the gun from his hand.
Chaloner managed to evade Griffith’s first swipe, but the wounded man grabbed his foot, causing him to fall. Then the second ruffian produced a cudgel, and struck him an agonising blow on the leg. Griffith moved in for the kill. Chaloner tried to struggle away, but it was hopeless.
Suddenly, there was a deafening report. The lout with the club dropped to the ground and lay still. Griffith dropped to a fighting stance, gazing around wildly.
‘Step away from him, Griffith,’ ordered Lane. There was anger in his usually impassive features. ‘You and your kind are not killing anyone else.’
‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Griffith furiously. ‘I told you to pack my—’
He did not finish, because Lane charged at him. Both crashed to the ground. Chaloner hobbled towards them, but it was too late. Blood seeped through Lane’s clothes, although he still clawed furiously at his opponent. Griffith punched him away, scrambled to his feet and fled. Chaloner tried to follow, but Griffith was fast, and Chaloner’s injured leg meant there was no chance of catching him. He limped back to Lane.
‘Do not waste time with me,’ Lane gasped. ‘Find Griffith and stop him before he does any more harm. My master would wish it.’
‘Your master?’ Chaloner’s mind reeled. ‘But Griffith is—’
‘Do you think I would demean myself by working for that villain? My master was a great man, and I am proud to have served him.’
‘Compton?’ suggested Chaloner tentatively, his thoughts in chaos. ‘Did he ask you to monitor Griffith? Because he suspected something amiss?’
Lane nodded, his face white with pain. ‘He ordered me to stop when his other men died, because he said it was too dangerous. But when he became a victim, I decided to disobey him for the first time in my life, and bring his killer to justice. I am usually good at keeping Griffith in my sights, but I lost him today in the traffic around Charing Cross. And it almost cost you your life!’
‘You are Fairfax!’ exclaimed Chaloner in understanding. ‘You did not let me give you Compton’s message in person, because I would have recognised you.’
‘Lane’ gave a wan smile. ‘I appreciated your efforts to protect me. But do not linger here. Go!’
Chaloner thought about his promise to Compton. ‘I cannot leave you—’
‘I have friends here, and my injury is not fatal. Stop this evil, or it will all have been for nothing.’
Chaloner stumbled down the lane, aiming for Bulteel’s house. It felt like an age before he arrived, gasping for breath, with sweat stinging his eyes and his leg aching viciously. The building sat small and pretty, with roses growing around the door – a small haven of peace and colour in the dirty metropolis. It was difficult to believe that a monster lodged there.
Common sense prevented Chaloner from staging a frontal assault, and forced him to go around the back. The gate was barred, so he scrambled over a wall and dropped silently down the other side. The garden was full of the herbs that Bulteel liked to use in his cooking, and bees buzzed among them. Chaloner reached the kitchen door and listened hard. He could hear someone inside. It was Bulteel, standing at his table as he rolled pastry. He was humming, happy and content.
Chaloner felt sick. Bulteel was cooking, something he had been unable to do while Griffith was staying with him. Did it mean Griffith had already gone? He opened the door and stepped inside, raising his finger to his lips when Bulteel looked up in surprise.
‘Where is Griffith?’ he whispered.
‘He arrived in a terrible fluster a few moments ago, and is upstairs, packing. I am fond of him, but it will be good to have the house to myself again. I am baking him a pie for the journey to—’
‘Did he mention Hannah and Thurloe?’ asked Chaloner desperately. ‘Falcon has them.’
‘Falcon?’ echoed Bulteel, confusion suffusing his face. Chaloner felt like grabbing him by the throat. Could he not see that it was an emergency? He took a deep breath, to calm himself.
‘Yes,’ he managed to reply. ‘Have you seen them?’ ‘No,’ said Bulteel. ‘But I can ask my cousin. Wait here while I fetch him. You—’
‘No! Do you have a cellar?’
Bulteel gaped at him. ‘A cellar? Why do you—’
‘John, please!’ begged Chaloner. ‘Where is it?’
‘This way,’ said Bulteel, regarding him in concern. ‘And then you had better sit down, because you look terrible.’
Chaloner followed him along the corridor, to where a low door led to a place where coal and firewood could be stored. A stout bar was placed across it.
‘Here,’ said Bulteel. ‘I keep it locked because I had rats last year. Do you want to see insid
e?’
Chaloner did not answer. He removed the bar and peered into the blackness within. The familiar fear of cell-like places gripped him as he took one step down the stairs, and then another. It was dank, cold and smelled of decay, like a prison. The notion distracted him, and by the time he realised something was amiss, it was too late. He heard Bulteel’s shriek of alarm before the door was slammed closed, plunging him into pitch darkness.
Chaloner was not alone. He could hear snuffling farther inside the chamber, and he stumbled down the uneven steps towards it. His groping fingers encountered hair and a face, wet with tears. He tugged off the gag.
‘Tom!’ sobbed Hannah. ‘Oh, thank God! We received a message from you that it was safe to come home, but it was a trick, and we have been locked in this miserable place for days.’
‘Hours,’ corrected Thurloe, when Chaloner removed the gag from him, too, and set about sawing through the ropes that bound their hands and feet. ‘But we must escape. Now. I overheard talk of plans to disrupt the conference – plans that will end any hope of peace for a very long time.’
‘What plans?’ demanded Chaloner.
‘I am not sure,’ confessed Thurloe. ‘But I do know they will be devastating, and we must stop them, no matter what the cost to ourselves.’
‘He has been trying to spoil the negotiations for months,’ added Hannah. Her voice shook, although she tried to keep it steady. ‘Ever since the Dutch arrived.’
‘Who has?’ asked Chaloner. ‘Griffith, who is not Griffith at all, but Falcon?’
‘Griffith is not Falcon,’ said Thurloe grimly. ‘He has been receiving orders, not giving them. Falcon is someone else – someone who holds a respected post at Court, and has access to powerful men. I have two suspects. Killigrew of the Savoy occupies a unique position to cause trouble …’
‘And his other suspect is Charles Bates, although he is loath to say so in front of me,’ said Hannah in a choked voice. ‘Because of Charles’s sudden departure from London, which means no one expects him to be here, so he is free to move about unfettered. But whoever it is means to cause untold damage. It is his revenge.’
‘His revenge for what?’ asked Chaloner.
‘On the many good, brave men who have tried to stop him,’ explained Thurloe. ‘They are mostly dead, so it is up to us now.’
Chaloner groped his way up the cellar steps and began inspecting the door. He pushed on it, but it was immovable. Fear washed through him. Griffith would kill Bulteel and abandon them there. It would be every bit as bad as Calais. Worse, because Hannah and Thurloe would be beside him. He saw a shadow flit across the bottom of the door.
‘John?’ he called softly. ‘John, are you there?’
‘Tom!’ Bulteel sounded terrified. ‘What is happening? My house is full of ruffians.’
‘Can you let us out?’ asked Chaloner.
The door began to rattle. ‘No! He must have jammed it. I do not understand—’
‘Fetch Williamson,’ ordered Chaloner. ‘He is at the Savoy.’
‘I cannot! My cousin has just produced several barrels of something that looks like gunpowder, and I think he means to use them. I must try to reason with him, before it sees him in trouble.’
Griffith would kill him, thought Chaloner. ‘He is not your cousin.’
There was a startled silence. ‘Of course he is!’
‘He has already confessed to deceiving you. Please! There is no time for explanations. Go to the Savoy. It is our only hope.’ Chaloner’s voice broke as he added, ‘Hannah and Thurloe are in here.’
Bulteel gulped, and Chaloner heard him scurry away. The spy leaned against the door and closed his eyes, his head pounding with tension and worry. But it was not many moments before Bulteel was back.
‘I cannot get out,’ he squeaked, his voice shaking almost uncontrollably. ‘All the doors and windows are locked. I do not understand what is happening!’
‘Griffith is in the pay of a deadly agent known as Falcon,’ supplied Thurloe. ‘A man who has blackmailed his friends, and damaged his country.’
Chaloner had a small packet of gunpowder in his belt, for priming the gun, and an idea began to unfold in his mind. While Thurloe regaled Bulteel with an account of Falcon’s misdeeds, he emptied it into the tin of greasy paste that Wiseman had given him for his disguise. Then he smeared the mixture on the door’s leather hinges.
Enough light was filtering under the door for Thurloe to see what he was doing. Wordlessly, he handed Chaloner the tinderbox he used for lighting his pipe. Chaloner struck a flame and touched it to the hinge. For a moment, he thought the leather was too damp to ignite, but it flared suddenly, and began to burn. Chaloner blew on it, to coax it along.
‘You should have stayed away,’ Bulteel was saying. ‘You should not have interfered.’
Chaloner stopped blowing as the final piece of the mystery snapped into place. He had encountered those words before – on a message attached to a corpse at his wedding.
‘It is you,’ he said in a low, shocked voice. ‘ You are Falcon.’
There was a silence from the other side of the door, then a bemused laugh. ‘What?’
‘Griffith would not have left you running free inside the house if you were not involved,’ Chaloner went on, stomach lurching at the implications of the realisation. ‘He would have killed you. So you pretend to be a victim, but your aim is to learn how much we have guessed about you.’
‘Tom!’ cried Bulteel, hurt in his voice, while Thurloe and Hannah regarded Chaloner in astonishment. ‘What are you saying?’
‘It was your choice of words: do not interfere. The same as those pinned on Alden in St Margaret’s Church. White thought they were aimed at him. Perhaps he was right.’
‘You mean at your marriage?’ Bulteel sounded puzzled. ‘Hannah did not invite me, so how—’
‘You came to the church,’ countered Chaloner. ‘I saw you standing at the back.’
‘What is that burning smell?’ asked Bulteel, suddenly suspicious. ‘What have you done?’
‘And there is more,’ said Chaloner. ‘Hanse’s body was stripped, because his killer was looking for something – Clarendon’s lost papers. The Earl misled me by saying they were stolen on Friday night, when Hanse had an alibi. But the killer knew the truth, which is that they went missing much earlier, when Hanse was in Worcester House.’
‘Hanse probably did steal them, as I have said all along. But I do not see how that proves I—’
‘You know everything about Clarendon’s affairs, so you would have known exactly when the papers went missing. Moreover, you were eager to have them back, not to protect your master, but because some of the documents you used to blackmail people were among them. The Lady’s—’
‘Tom!’ cried Bulteel, distressed. ‘This is logic gone wild. But what is that smell—’
‘Bulteel is the blackmailer, too?’ asked Hannah, shocked.
‘Yes, ably assisted by Griffith, Kicke and Nisbett,’ replied Chaloner, blowing on the fire again. He sincerely hoped his plan would work and the hinges would soon disintegrate, or he, Hannah and Thurloe were going to be trapped inside a burning cellar.
‘I do not fraternise with thieves,’ said Bulteel coldly. ‘And what are you doing in there? I can definitely smell smoke. You had better not be—’
‘I do not care about the Court rakes – they make their own choices,’ Chaloner went on, to distract him. ‘But how could you pick on Compton? He was a good man.’
‘It was his wanton sister who transgressed,’ muttered Bulteel. ‘Not him.’
‘And there is an admission of guilt!’ pounced Chaloner. ‘The family told no one about Penelope’s indiscretion. Only they and the blackmailers knew.’
‘And you, apparently,’ Bulteel flashed back. ‘There is smoke oozing under the door. Do you want to choke to death? Stop whatever it is you are doing, or—’
‘A rumour started that Clarendon did not know what was in his missing papers,
’ Chaloner forged on. ‘He blamed me for spreading it, because he said I was the only one he had told. But you knew, because you eavesdropped on us. In fact, you eavesdrop on a lot of people.’
‘You are despicable,’ shouted Hannah suddenly. ‘A monster, who preys on the vulnerable. I have never liked you, you treacherous little snake, and I am glad I told Tom to reject your overtures of friendship. I cannot imagine why he wasted his time in the first place.’
‘Because you cannot cook,’ Bulteel yelled, abruptly abandoning any pretence at innocence. ‘And he does not love you, anyway. How could he, when you are both so different? You will hate each other within a year, and then he will be glad of loyal friends.’
‘He will never hate me,’ began Hannah, shocked by the outburst. ‘He—’
‘I despise you and everyone like you,’ Bulteel raged on. ‘People who think themselves superior to me. I am sorry Tom must be sacrificed, but I am glad you will be blown to pieces.’
‘John,’ called Chaloner reasonably. ‘It is not too late to end this. We can—’
‘No!’ cried Bulteel. ‘I know you. You will hunt me down, and I will never rest easy again. Why could you not have left London when I suggested it? Why could Clarendon not have dismissed you in revenge for the rumour I started about his lost papers? Then you would have been safely away.’
‘You warned me against antagonising Kicke and Nisbett—’
‘They are malicious and unforgiving, but good at their work, which is why I hired them. But I did not want them to hurt you – the one man in White Hall who has been kind to me.’
‘Then help me now,’ urged Chaloner. ‘Open the door and—’
‘I cannot! It is too late.’
‘Despite my reservations, Tom is fond of you,’ shouted Hannah. ‘And he always defends you against those who say nasty things. But how do you repay him? By locking him in a cellar and threatening to blow him up! You are incapable of friendship, you loathsome little worm.’
The Body in the Thames: Chaloner's Sixth Exploit in Restoration London (Exploits of Thomas Chaloner) Page 38
