A Traitor's Tears (27 page)

‘Yes. He did what I thought most likely,' I said. ‘As I said last night, I purposely annoyed him in the hope that he'd walk out, leaving me in the parlour and then I kept us downstairs until he'd had his chance to get at my wine – which I'd ordered in his hearing. When I gave that order, Dale, I was afraid you were going to exclaim in surprise!'

‘I couldn't understand it,' Dale said. ‘You'd never done such a thing before. But madam, what made you think of it? What gave you the idea?'

‘It was when Ryder said that Wyse provided poison for use on guard dogs,' I said. ‘Apparently, he told Ryder that he'd mixed it with something to make the dogs sleepy as well, to keep them from making much noise. It was obvious that Ryder thought that Wyse had poisoned guard dogs in the past and perhaps they did make a noise, so this time he added something that would prevent that. Well, poor Sandy cried. Maybe
that
was Wyse's piece of past experience. I kept thinking about it. Then I remembered that Sandy once had his nose in Simon's ale tankard. If dogs liked strong drink, I thought perhaps mice might. And if so, maybe it would be a way of finding out if anything had been done to my wine. It was chancy. The mice might have crept off and died out of sight under the floorboards but they didn't. We have our evidence for Walsingham.'

Brockley had unstoppered the wine flask and was sniffing at it. ‘There's a queer smell,' he said. ‘Faint, but it's there.'

‘We've got to get rid of it,' I said. ‘What's below the window?'

Brockley, flask in hand, went to look. ‘A dusty-looking bush,' he said. He wrestled for a moment with a stiff latch, got the casement open and emptied the flask out of it. ‘I don't know whether it can harm the bush but the poor thing looks half-dead already.' He turned back into the room. ‘The flask will need a good wash.'

‘Better break it,' I said. ‘I'll apologize for the accident and pay for it. Lucky it's glass and not metal or leather; it'll be easier to destroy. And then, Brockley, I must leave you and Dale here, while I make haste to Whitehall. And Walsingham.'

I
was recognized this time and admitted to Walsingham's presence with little delay. As usual, he was busy at a cluttered desk while his clerks were also busy, three of them in an outer office and Humphrey Johnson, their senior, in the same room as his master. Walsingham wasn't in a good temper, and his face looked drawn. I suspected a return of the mys-terious stomach trouble from which he so often suffered. I wondered if perhaps his ailment was the reason why he so often seemed so stark and joyless and wished I could ask Gladys to advise him.

Still, he was gracious enough to grant me an interview though his response to what I had to say was disappointing.

‘Granted, it sounds as if there are some bits and pieces of evidence that point at Roland Wyse, but what do they really amount to? You say you have learned from his mother that she once had an affair with the Earl of Surrey, the father of the late Duke of Norfolk, and that Wyse and the duke were brothers. And Wyse wept when at his brother's execution. I urged that on, which explains why he probably detests me, but where does that get us? Then there is what you say about Jane Cobbold …'

‘On the day of her death, she may have overheard him talking to Jarvis. It brings the three of them together,' I said, interrupting him and repeating what I had already told him. And others.
Ad nauseam
, I thought irritably.

‘He has always said that when he left Cobbold Hall, he paused to speak to Jarvis,' Walsingham said ruthlessly. ‘Then someone broke into your house at Hawkswood just after one of your dogs was poisoned.
If
it was deliberately poisoned and its death wasn't an accident. You say the other dog wasn't poisoned but didn't bark at the intruder and that this proves it was someone it knew. Well, possibly, but that someone wasn't necessarily Roland Wyse! There must be a fair number of people that the dog would recognize. That doesn't prove that it was he who fed venom to
your
dog! Or that anyone did. Yes, dogs were poisoned in Hertfordshire, when a squad including Wyse went there in search of priests, and it seems that he supplied the poison. But quite a few of my staff know how to obtain venom for dealing with guard dogs. Some of them have actually had to do it and therefore could be said to have experience in that unpleasant task. It's evidence of nothing at all.'

‘Something killed those mice!' I protested.

Walsingham uttered a dismissive snort and Humphrey Johnson remarked: ‘Mice aren't very big. Was the wine strong?'

‘Yes, fairly. It was a good wine. But …'

‘Perhaps the mice just died of poisoning by alcohol.'

‘I think Humphrey feels as I do,' said Walsingham. ‘Wyse isn't popular but that doesn't make him a murder suspect.' The secretary cleared his throat. ‘Yes, Humphrey?' said Walsingham.

‘I can't see him as a criminal,' Humphrey said. ‘Just an ambitious fellow who hasn't got quite what's needed to achieve his ambitions. He tries to buy favour, you know. Presents for all at Christmas and he tips too well in taverns. But it doesn't really work.
He
works, I grant you – wants to get on. But he panics if things go wrong. Remember, sir, when he mislaid the report on that Hertfordshire house? He ran about like a beheaded hen until he found it. He was
sweating
in case he lost his job, but all he'd done was put the thing in the wrong file.' I remembered that according to Christina Ferris, her father had said that Wyse was panicky because he had had difficulty in tracking Edward Heron down. ‘I don't like him,' said Johnson. ‘But as a cunning criminal – no, I don't think so.'

Brockley had said he looked like an assassin. Maybe he hadn't quite got what was needed to be an efficient assassin, I thought. I did not however repeat Brockley's comment. It wasn't evidence.

‘I take your point, Humphrey,' Walsingham was saying. ‘Look, Mistress Stannard, nothing you have told me adds up to anything definite. I have great respect for you but I do find this attempt to point a finger at one of my staff a little annoying, even when the man concerned is not my favourite personality. Well, I am no favourite myself with quite a number of people. Wyse does in fact have much ability and time may mature him out of his faults. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have much work on hand. There have been a number of reports of Catholic sedition, in widely scattered places. If I had my way, I would simply declare Catholicism itself illegal. I and my family were in Paris during the Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve and we feared for our lives. But the queen will not have it. I am forced to use the new legislation against proselytizing as my best weapon. I need to have these reports followed up and …'

‘Please,' I said, ‘would you tell me just one thing. When that cipher letter, the one found on Jarvis, was decoded by Wyse, did anyone check his work afterwards? He gave you the key.'

‘Of course it was checked, and by me! Once in a while I like to carry out such tasks in person, and decoding that cipher was good mental exercise. The decoding that Wyse did was correct in every respect.'

‘Do you still have the original?'

‘Yes, I took charge of it when he brought it back to me along with the clear version.' He pulled out a drawer from his desk and took a folded document from it. ‘Here it is.' He handed it to me. ‘Do I read you aright?' he asked. ‘You want to check the decoding yourself?'

‘Yes, if I may. I can sit in the other room with the clerks so as not to disturb you. It may be a slow business – it's a complex key.'

‘Yes, that's what foxed my other clerks. I tried to speed matters up by telling them to make copies so that all three of them could work on it at once. They did so but none of them broke the code. Very well, you may sit in the outer office and test Wyse's work and mine, but you'll be wasting your time. You'll find—Yes, all right, come in, what is it?'

A knock on the door to the clerks' room had interrupted us. The clerk who now entered in response to Walsingham's irritable summons was a gangling young man with intelligent dark eyes and longish dark hair that flopped into them. I liked the look of him, but Walsingham glared at him.

‘I didn't wish to be disturbed and when, Master Wentworth, are you going to the barber to get your hair cut? Or do you propose to start curling it with tongs? Now, what is it you want?'

‘A report from France has just come in, sir; we can expect a new wave of priests from the Continent at any moment, it seems. I felt you should see it at once.' Young Master Wentworth, apparently unperturbed by Walsingham's tone, came up to the desk and placed some papers in front of his master. His glance lighted on the letter in my hand.

‘Is that another enciphered message that will need decoding, sir? Master Wyse isn't here but I'll gladly tackle it, and so will the others, and perhaps we'll have more success this time. We couldn't break the Jarvis code but I think we learned a good deal, trying.'

‘That
is
the Jarvis code,' said Walsingham. ‘It's the original. Mistress Stannard wishes to examine it for herself.'

Master Wentworth, interested, gave the letter a closer glance and then stiffened. ‘But, sir, it isn't.'

Walsingham and I both stared at him and at his desk, Humphrey, who had resumed his work, paused, quill in hand. ‘What do you mean?' Walsingham demanded.

‘I made the copies of the original for us clerks to work with, sir. I did all three of them. I worked from the original, of course, but then gave it back to you, and you kept it, if you remember, and passed it to Roland Wyse to tackle, when he returned. But I recall it very clearly. I know what the first few letters were and these are different. May I?'

He held out a hand and I gave him the letter. He felt it with his fingertips and studied the text minutely. ‘The paper is the same texture, and the hand that wrote this is the same, or so I think, but the letters aren't. The first ones are certainly different, and there's this paragraph halfway down, where I know there was an amusing sequence of letters in the first line … a trifle rude, in fact … just a minute. I still have the copy that I used when I tried to decode it. May I fetch it?'

Walsingham's expression was alert. ‘I think you'd better.'

Master Wentworth departed, his long legs crossing to the door in a couple of strides. He reappeared almost at once, paper in hand. ‘Here's my copy. You can see for yourself.'

The paper he had brought was creased from folding, but he put it on the desk and smoothed it with a firm hand. He put the so-called original beside it. Walsingham and I almost bumped heads as we leant to compare them.

Master Wentworth was right. The texts were not the same. In fact, the copy that the clerks had tried to interpret was shorter by four lines.

I said, ‘But …' And stopped.

‘I gave the original to Roland Wyse to work on as you say,' said Walsingham slowly. ‘I can't say I examined it in detail or memorized any part of it. He brought back what he said was the same original, along with the clear version. He must have switched a false original for the real one. It's the only explanation. I don't think he knew there were copies. I don't recall ever mentioning them to him; I just said some of my clerks had each tried to decode the letter and failed. In which case …'

I said, ‘If the code turns out to be the same, may I have the privilege of deciphering a copy of the genuine original?'

I sat in the clerks' room, where a space had been made for me at the end of a table and stared in disbelief at the text I had uncovered. The result was making my head spin. When I rose to take it to Walsingham, I found that my limbs moved stiffly, as though I were a puppet, pulled by strings.

The helpful Wentworth knocked on Walsingham's door for me and said through it that Mistress Stannard had finished her task and wished to present it. Walsingham called me in.

‘You've managed the decoding?' he said as I entered.

‘Yes. But …'

‘But?'

‘You're going to find it unbelievable,' I said, looking at the papers in my hand. ‘You're going to think I'm playing some mysterious and horrible game, but I'm not. Please check my work, or have it checked, if you so wish. If the cipher letter I've been working on is a true copy of what was found on Jarvis's body, then it really does say what my translation says.'

‘Give them both to me,' said Walsingham.

I walked over to his desk and handed my work over to him. He studied it in silence, while I waited. Humphrey Johnson was still busy at his desk. Walsingham called to him. ‘Come and look at this.'

Humphrey obeyed. And then looked up, eyes wide with shock. ‘This is beyond reason,' he said.

‘Quite,' Walsingham agreed.'

‘I know,' I told them. ‘But that's what it
says
.'

‘This,' said Walsingham, staring at the decoded letter once more, ‘is apparently addressed to the Principal of the Jesuit seminary at Rheims. It thanks him for a recent payment, which has been safely received. The writer is happy with this generous reward and prays that the information he has provided will be of value. He hopes to be even more useful in the future.

‘The letter then goes on to say that when, as the writer devoutly hopes, a full-scale Jesuit mission to England is finally mounted, he recommends that the missionaries should avoid Dover and come in by way of other ports – Norwich, Hull, or Bristol. It states that details of safe houses close to those ports will be supplied in good time. These are already being assembled but this has to be done with great caution and secrecy as no breath of suspicion must attach to the writer. The letter is then signed. With my name.'

There was a moment of appalled silence, and then Walsingham said: ‘Ursula, did you let any of my clerks see this?'