A Murder on London Bridge (40 page)

‘It would make sense.’

Aware that time was running out fast – there were now only two days left before Shrove Tuesday, and dawn was already beginning to lighten the eastern sky – Chaloner flagged down a hackney carriage, and went to tell the Earl what he had found.

As it was Sunday, Hannah was obliged to escort the Queen to chapel, so she parted from Chaloner in the Great Court. He was relieved that she would be occupied for the rest of the day – it meant she could not sidle away on some investigation of her own, because although his mind was still full of questions, he was absolutely certain about one thing: they were dealing with some very ruthless and determined individuals, and he wanted her as far away from them as possible.

The Lord Chancellor was at church when Chaloner arrived, so he told Leigh about the discovery in St Mary Overie instead. The little soldier was not very interested, although he promised to send two men to claim the weapons before they could be used.

‘No,’ said Chaloner, wishing Leigh had a more tactical mind. ‘We need to put St Mary Overie under surveillance, and see who comes to collect them.’

‘You mean just look on, while villains grab this arsenal?’ asked Leigh, regarding him warily.

‘Of course not,’ snapped Chaloner. Weariness and tension were beginning to fray his nerves. ‘Your men arrest whoever comes. Then they can be questioned about their plans.’

‘But I do not have the troops for that sort of operation,’ Leigh barked back. ‘The Earl is ordering me here, there and everywhere for his Bishops’ Dinner, and I can barely keep up with him. I will send two fellows to collect this cache, but I cannot keep them standing around indefinitely.’

‘Surely, thwarting an uprising is more important than—’

‘I do not trust your theories,’ interrupted Leigh angrily. ‘You were wrong about Great Queen Street, and you were wrong about the gold. I am wasting no more time on your fancies.’

And that was the end of the discussion. Chaloner watched him stamp away with a rising sense of despair. Was no one, other than Hannah, willing to help? Bulteel came to stand next to him.

‘The Earl told me about these adapted fireworks,’ he said. ‘And I understand his reluctance to authorise a major search. If he does order one, Somerset House will say he is making spiteful allegations because he wants the Dowager to cancel her ball.’

‘That is better than the alternative,’ Chaloner pointed out acidly. ‘Namely that Luckin and his cronies succeed in their objective, and the resulting outrage gives rise to innocent Catholics being attacked in the streets. Not to mention the carnage that might ensue, should these fireworks ignite.’

‘You have no evidence that they exist
or
that it is Luckin who intends to use them,’ Bulteel pointed out quietly. ‘It is only a theory.’

‘The Earl seemed ready to accept the possibility last night,’ retorted Chaloner bitterly. ‘But I have no idea where they might be. I have looked in Chapel House and St Mary Overie, and will return to the Drury Lane theatre later today. But there is no sign of the wretched things.’

Bulteel was thoughtful. ‘The Earl has been saying for weeks that something odd is happening on the Bridge, and I understand that the wife of one of its wardens was attacked. Have you considered looking in Bridge House? I was shown around the place once, and it has huge, deep cellars. Moreover, it is not far from Chapel House, which you say has seen some suspicious activity.’

Chaloner stared at him. He was right! Angry that he had not seen it for himself, he ran out of White Hall, leapt into a hackney carriage, and ordered the driver to take him to Southwark as quickly as possible.

When he arrived, it was to find Bridge House deserted. The clerks did not work on Sundays, and the maid who answered the door said Hussey had taken his children to church, to give thanks for the birth of the latest Robert. She invited Chaloner to wait in the parlour, then pottered off on business of her own, leaving him unattended. It was too good an opportunity to miss, so he began to explore.

He had finished searching the upper chambers and was heading for the cellar, when Hussey and his brood arrived home. Loath to be caught somewhere he was not meant to be, Chaloner hid in a cupboard and waited while they stampeded past to the kitchen, intending to return to the parlour and wait for the maid to inform Hussey that he was there. But he could hear knives rattling on plates and the maid’s agitated shrieks as the brats mobbed her for food, and had a feeling he might be waiting some time before she remembered him. It would not take a moment to investigate the basement, and there was no point in wasting time.

He padded to the cellar door and opened it. But it was to find himself confronted by a long, dark, stone stairway that reminded him painfully and unexpectedly of a French prison in which he had once been incarcerated. As the time he had spent there still gave him occasional nightmares, he froze in shock.

‘Keep going,’ came a soft whisper from behind. ‘If you turn around, I will blow your head off.’

Chaloner recognised Hussey’s voice, and also recognised the feel of a gun-barrel against his neck. He cursed the weakness that had turned him momentarily deaf, although he was not unduly alarmed by his predicament. Hussey would know him the moment he saw his face, and would let him go.

‘I can explain,’ he said, looking at the steps and thinking wild horses would not induce him to go down them. ‘The Earl of Clar—’

But Hussey was not in the mood for chatter. He shoved Chaloner hard, sending him head over heels into the darkness. Chaloner’s senses reeled as he hit the bottom, and he was only dimly aware of being grabbed by the collar and hauled forward. Then he was deposited on a floor, and heard a door slam and a bolt shot into place. Prison sounds. Chaloner’s wits snapped clear.

‘Hey!’ he shouted to the retreating footsteps. ‘Wait!’

‘You can stay there until I summon the constables tomorrow,’ Hussey called back. ‘Burglars are the scourge of this fine city, and I mean to see justice done with the one I have caught.’

‘I am not a burglar,’ objected Chaloner. ‘I am on the Lord Chancellor’s staff, and—’

‘A likely story,’ sneered Hussey. His voice was already a long way away – he was climbing the stairs. ‘The Earl of Clarendon is the last man to employ thieves.’

‘We have met before,’ called Chaloner, appalled by the turn of events. ‘I visited you in your parlour, and your children—’

‘I do not fraternise with criminals,’ came Hussey’s distant reply. ‘And neither do they.’

‘Please!’ yelled Chaloner desperately, not liking the notion of being locked up, especially when there was so much to do outside. ‘Contact Clarendon, tell him I am here. He will confirm my story.’

But Hussey had gone, and there was only silence.

Chaloner resisted the urge to hammer on the door and howl for release, and forced himself to explore his surroundings instead. Hussey had closed the door at the top of the stairs, leaving him in pitch blackness, but Chaloner estimated he was in a room that was perhaps twelve feet long by ten wide. Its walls were stone, and there were no loose or crumbling sections. The ceiling was low and dripped moisture, and the floor was beaten earth. There was no way out except through the door.

The chamber was empty, except for a long crate. Its lid was nailed down, and Chaloner fumbled to prise it open, fully expecting it to contain fireworks. But when his questing fingers slipped inside, they encountered something long and hard. At first, he thought it was a weapon, and his hopes rose. But it was short and uneven, and felt more like wood than metal. He groped his way along it, until he reached something akin to a basket. And further along again was something domed.

He yanked his hand away in horror. It was a skeleton! Was this what had happened to the last ‘burglar’ Hussey had caught? Panic overcame him then, and he spent several minutes kicking the door in an effort to break through it. But it was made of thick wood reinforced with iron; he could no more batter it down than he could dig his way through the stone walls. Moreover, the silence was absolute, and he knew he could shout himself hoarse, but no one would hear. He was trapped until Hussey came back.
If
Hussey came back.

Then he smiled. Hussey would talk to the maid, who would tell him a visitor was waiting in the parlour. When they found it empty, they would put two and two together and he would be released. The smile faded. Or would they? Hussey might simply conclude that the ‘visitor’ had requested an interview to get inside the house, and would be even more inclined to forget about him.

The hopelessness of his situation overwhelmed him at that point. He could not imagine a worse fate than being locked for ever in an underground chamber with no light. He slumped to the ground, pulled his knees up in front of him, and rested his head on his arms. What would Hannah say when he failed to return? And Thurloe? How long would the Earl take to find a replacement?

He supposed he must have dozed, because he came to his senses with a start some time later. Had he heard a sound? He listened intently, and became aware of a faint light shining under the door. It was not a large light – a candle, rather than a lamp. Then there was a scrape, and his room was suddenly brighter. With horror, he saw there was a grille in the door. He
was
in a prison cell!

‘There he is.’ It was the exaggerated whisper of a child. ‘He does not
look
like a burglar.’

‘They never look like burglars,’ came a scornful reply of another boy. ‘If they went round looking like burglars, everyone would know what they were, and they would all be arrested.’

‘Robert?’ asked Chaloner, recognising the lad who had been berated for doing something ungenteel on the Bridge. How long ago was that? He could not say, because he had no idea how long he had been incarcerated. He was hungry, so he suspected several hours had passed.

‘How do you know our names?’ demanded the second speaker, the older of the pair.

‘Will you take a message to the Lord Chancellor?’ asked Chaloner, climbing to his feet. ‘I will pay you. Bring me pen and paper, and I will write—’

‘We had better not, because father will not like it,’ said the younger of the pair. ‘What did you steal?’

‘Nothing,’ replied Chaloner, squinting when the candle was thrust through the grille to allow the brats a better look at him. ‘What is the time?’

‘Eight o’clock,’ replied the older Robert. ‘In the evening. We brought you some food, because father will not remember, and we do not like to think of anyone going hungry.’

Something sailed through the grille, and then the lads were gone, taking their candle with them. Chaloner crawled across the floor, and groped around for what they had thrown him. It was a lump of cake, although it had suffered from bouncing across the floor, and was wet and gritty. He ate it anyway.

He slept again, but woke shivering. It was icy cold in the cellar, and the damp had penetrated his clothes. He warmed himself by pacing for a while, and tried to take his mind off the fix he was in by thinking about his investigations. Then he slipped into another series of restless dozes, waking every so often to wonder how many precious hours were slipping past. Or was it days by now?

Eventually, for something to do, he groped his way towards the box, intending to replace the lid as a mark of respect. His fingers brushed the skull as he did so. It felt fragile and dusty. Did that mean it was someone who had been dead for a long time? Or had the victim died recently, but corpses simply decayed faster in dank cellars?

He was startled out of his grim reverie by the reappearance of the light. He stood quickly, and braced himself. If he grabbed a Robert, he could threaten to break the lad’s neck unless their father released him. It was hardly a noble means of escape, but he was desperate enough to try it. The grille opened, revealing a plump face beyond. There was only one child this time, the smaller one.

‘Do not make a sound,’ the boy whispered. ‘I have come to let you out.’

Chaloner was taken aback, and his hands dropped to his sides. ‘Have you? Why?’

‘Because father says you will hang, and I went to a hanging once and I did not like it. But you must promise never to burgle anyone again.’

‘I was not burgling this time,’ said Chaloner, as Robert began to struggle with the bolt. ‘The Lord Chancellor ordered me to look for fireworks. I do not suppose you have seen any, have you? You seem an observant lad.’

Robert was flattered. ‘Sir John Winter has plenty. He keeps them in a warehouse by the river, but someone came in a cart yesterday and took them all away. The driver probably carried them to Somerset House, because Sir John is organising a display there.’

With a snap, the bolt finally opened and the door swung open. Chaloner shot through it before Robert could change his mind, and aimed for the stairs. He paused at the top, listening hard.

‘It is all right,’ said Robert from behind him. ‘Father and the others have all gone for breakfast in the cookshop.’

‘Breakfast?’ asked Chaloner uneasily. ‘What time is it?’

‘Just past ten o’clock,’ replied Robert, adding helpfully, ‘On Monday morning. I would have let you out sooner, but this was the first opportunity.’

Christ!’ muttered Chaloner, appalled by the lost time.

He thought fast. He had to be at the Bear tavern by noon, because that was the time stipulated in the note he had found in Winter’s house, when someone was instructed to meet ‘Goff’. There was just enough time to ask Leigh to search the Drury Lane theatre, and to send a message telling Hannah he was safe.

Leigh said he was too busy to talk, but was able to report that his men had collected the arms from St Mary Overie. They had admitted to a curious feeling of being watched, but had done nothing about it. Chaloner closed his eyes in despair.

‘People are going to die if we do not stop this,’ he whispered.