The Body in the Thames (4 page)

Before he had left for Holland, Chaloner had advised Bulteel to send his ‘family’ on an extended visit to the country; the
fiction was beginning to unravel, and he did not want his friend exposed as a liar. He was surprised Bulteel was willing to
deceive a cousin, though – kinsmen were more difficult to mislead than colleagues, because they would want to know to whom
they were related.

‘I am pleased to have his company,’ Bulteel went on, although he looked anything but pleased, and Chaloner wondered whether
the strain of having a houseguest accounted for some of his weariness. ‘He has been here since February.’

‘I have,’ agreed Griffith. ‘And I am sure you have
noticed a great improvement in John’s deportment and speech in that time. He is very nearly a gentleman.’

‘He has never been anything else,’ said Chaloner, using a compliment to avoid saying that Bulteel had not changed at all.

Bulteel blushed and hastily turned the conversation away from himself. ‘Griffith lived in The Hague once.’

Griffith took the abrupt switch in his stride. ‘But I did not like it. It smelled of cheese.’

Chaloner had never noticed a smell of cheese, and was beginning to suspect that a penchant for fabrication ran in the family.

‘Did you know that one of the Dutch diplomats vanished on Friday?’ Bulteel asked his cousin conversationally. ‘Ambassador
van Goch told me today that he fears for the fellow’s safety.’

So did Chaloner, and heartily wished his enquiries into Hanse’s disappearance had yielded clues. For all his efforts, he knew
no more now than he had when it had first been reported.

‘Then let us hope he is found safe and well,’ said Griffith, not very interested. He brightened. ‘Come with me to the New
Exchange, John. One of its merchants has some
lovely
taffeta for sale.’

The Earl snatched the wig Chaloner handed him, and studied it minutely. ‘There is a hole in it!’ he cried in dismay. ‘It will
cost a fortune to repair.’

‘It was shoved inside a false ceiling,’ explained Chaloner.

‘I never did like Kicke and Nisbett,’ said Clarendon, placing the hair on a special stand. ‘Unfortunately, Downing hired them
when you were fooling around
overseas, or I would have ordered you to watch them from the start. Has there been any word on that Dutchman, by the way?’

‘No, sir. Not yet.’

‘He has been gone for almost two days now. And if he is as crucial to peace as Heer van Goch maintains, we must do all in
our power to locate him. I thought I made that clear to you yesterday.’

‘You did, sir,’ said Chaloner, itching to remind the Earl that he had actually been more interested in catching the White
Hall thieves. ‘But all I can tell you about Hanse is that he was last seen at half-past eight on Friday evening, climbing
into a hackney carriage outside the Sun tavern in Westminster. The driver was instructed to take him directly to the Savoy,
but no one saw him arrive.’

‘How do you know? Have you interviewed his fellow diplomats?’

Chaloner nodded. ‘And their servants.’

‘Perhaps he decided London is too dangerous, so elected to leave. I would not blame him. Hollanders are unpopular here – they
cannot leave their lodgings without threats being hurled.’

‘Never. He thinks war will be bad for both our countries, and is determined to avert one.’

The Earl regarded him soberly, and Chaloner tensed, waiting for the obvious question: how did
he
know what a foreign diplomat believed? He had not concealed his kinship with Hanse from any desire to be secretive, but because
he had been trained never to share personal information, and found it a difficult habit to break. He had not even confided
in Hannah.

‘Do you think he is dead?’ asked the Earl instead.

‘I hope not,’ replied Chaloner, although the possibility
had crossed his mind. ‘It would deal the peace process a terrible blow. And his wife travelled from the States-General with
him …’

Jacoba, he thought to himself, recalling the disconcerting experience of seeing Aletta’s eyes smiling at him when they had
met the previous week. They had been sisters.

‘Then I shall pray for his safe return,’ said the Earl, rather insincerely. ‘But if he
is
dead – murdered – then who are your suspects?’

Chaloner tried not to let his master’s callous attitude annoy him. ‘Anyone who wants a war, I suppose. Including some of his
colleagues.’

The Earl’s eyebrows went up. ‘But the Dutch came here specifically to argue for peace.’

‘Heer van Goch did. But his retinue of diplomats, servants and soldiers comprises more than two hundred people. Among so many,
differences of opinion will be inevitable.’

‘Yes, I suppose the delegation
is
that large,’ acknowledged Clarendon. ‘Of course, you are in a unique position to know their real thoughts, given that you
speak the language.’

‘I do not spy on them,’ said Chaloner immediately.

‘You should,’ countered the Earl. ‘You might learn something useful.’

‘And I might hear it in the wrong context, and tell you something inaccurate or misleading,’ replied Chaloner. ‘There is more
to spying than just repeating what is overheard.’

‘Yes, I have been told that the reports you composed when you were stationed overseas were good in that respect. But you
know
these people and their ways, so I
do not see why you cannot manage a little eavesdropping to help your country.’

‘I would need to be there on a full-time basis to be of any real value,’ explained Chaloner, striving for patience. They had
discussed this before. ‘Besides, I am sure Spymaster Williamson has his own people in place. Too many intelligencers will
cause confusion and be counterproductive.’

The Earl was thoughtful. ‘The negotiations are proceeding far more slowly than they should, and mistrust and suspicion are
rife. Perhaps you have just explained why – a surfeit of spies.’

‘Perhaps. Of course, there is also the fact that the Dutch know that most of our country would much rather go to war. It is
hardly an attitude that encourages them to make concessions.’

The Earl grimaced. ‘I am aware of that, believe me! But there is another reason why you must find Hanse as quickly as possible.
It pertains to the Privy Council papers that were stolen.’

‘What Privy Council papers, sir?’ asked Chaloner warily.

The Earl glared at him. ‘I am sure I told you about them in the park yesterday. They went missing on Friday evening. From
this very room! And I want them back.’

‘I see,’ said Chaloner, biting back his exasperation that the Earl had neglected to inform him of such an important matter
immediately. It certainly had
not
been mentioned in the park, and the passage of time would make them that much harder to locate. ‘But how do they relate to
Hanse?’

‘On Friday morning, just hours before they disappeared, I entertained two men here: van Goch and Hanse.
They must have seen these documents, and decided to steal them.’

Chaloner gazed at him, not sure whether he was more startled by the suggestion that two high-ranking diplomats would resort
to theft, or that the Earl should have left such items lying around for foreign visitors to spot in the first place.

‘Hanse and van Goch are not thieves, sir,’ he began.

‘They are—’

‘Well, someone made off with them,’ snapped the Earl. ‘And they went on Friday evening, between six and eight o’clock, when
I was dining with my wife and the papers were up here unattended. They could not have been taken before then, because I was
reading them.’

‘But van Goch and Hanse left you at noon,’ said Chaloner, recalling the pair walking away to the accompaniment of bells striking
twelve o’clock. ‘They were not here between six and eight.’

‘So? All that means is that they saw the papers, and elected to come and steal them later.’

‘How? There are guards on all your doors
and
patrolling the garden. Or are you suggesting that Heer van Goch climbed up the side of the house and slipped in through a
window?’

‘Do not be impertinent!’ barked the Earl. ‘Hanse must have done it.’

‘He has an alibi. He was in the Sun tavern from six o’clock until roughly half-past eight.’ Chaloner did not mention that
he
was the alibi. ‘He could not have stolen these papers.’

‘I do not believe it,’ snapped the Earl. ‘He
did
steal them, and
that
is why he has disappeared. He is ferrying them back to the States-General as we speak.’

‘I will interview your staff this afternoon,’ said Chaloner, declining to argue.

‘The thief is no one in my household!’ shouted the Earl. ‘They are all above reproach.’

They might have been once, thought Chaloner, but the Earl treated them badly, and one might well have made off with the papers
to give him a good fright. He tried another avenue of questioning.

‘What was in these documents, sir? Matters of interest to the States-General?’

‘Maybe,’ replied the Earl cagily. ‘But do not ask me to elaborate, because I am bound by oaths of secrecy. Suffice to say
they are highly sensitive.’

Chaloner smothered a sigh. How was he supposed to discover who had stolen the papers, when he did not know who might benefit
from reading the things? And if they were so important, why had the Earl waited two days before ordering their disappearance
investigated? He was about to press the matter further when there were footsteps outside, followed by a knock on the door.
It was Bulteel.

‘There is news, sir,’ said the secretary. ‘Nisbett and Kicke have just been released from custody.’

‘What?’ spluttered the Earl. ‘But their guilt was beyond question!’

‘Apparently, now most of what they stole is back with its rightful owners, people are inclined to see the matter as a bit
of harmless fun. Anger has turned to admiration, especially as Kicke claims he did it to protect White Hall – to draw attention
to its lax security, so something could be done to remedy the situation.’

‘If that were true, then why did he not say so in the park?’ pounced Chaloner.

‘Quite,’ said Bulteel acidly. ‘But it is all the Lady’s doing. She is taken with their daring, and the story is that it was
she
who persuaded the King to let them go.’

‘Then let us hope they learn from their narrow escape and leave the city,’ said the Earl.

‘They have not,’ said Bulteel. ‘Downing immediately dismissed them, lest people think
he
put them up to it. But the Lady has offered them posts instead. At a much higher salary.’

The Earl scowled. ‘She is doing it to spite me, because it was my retainer who caught them.’

Petty though it sounded, Chaloner suspected he might well be right.

Despite the Earl’s contention that he would be wasting his time, Chaloner spent the rest of the morning and much of the afternoon
interviewing Worcester House’s staff about the missing papers. Unfortunately, his master was right: no one had seen or heard
anything out of the ordinary. Chaloner pursued the matter diligently until four o’clock, when most of them went home.

He had a talent for sketching and a good memory for faces, so he drafted a reasonable likeness of the hackneyman who had
taken Hanse to the Savoy, and showed it to every driver who would talk to him. It was almost three hours before he found one
who nodded recognition. He was a Scot named Murdoch, who had helped him with information before.

‘That is Saul Ibbot. He used to work over in Smithfield, and rarely came this way, but he was here on Friday. We shared a
pipe together while we watered our horses.’

The use of the past tense did not escape Chaloner. ‘Has something happened to him?’

‘You have not heard? He was killed when his coach overturned in Long Lane yesterday.’

Such events were commonplace in a city where carriages were not very roadworthy, and although Chaloner had overheard people
discussing the incident, he had not thought much about it.

‘An accident?’ he asked.

Murdoch shrugged. ‘Probably, although his horse – he called it Cromwell – seemed a steady nag to me. Still, it happens.’

But not normally to drivers whose passengers had mysteriously gone missing, thought Chaloner worriedly. He walked to Smithfield
in the bright, arid blaze of the setting sun, and set about finding someone who would direct him to Ibbot’s house. It took
a while, but eventually he was led to a dark, dirty alley near Aldgate Street. His knock was answered by a woman with a howling
baby in her arms. She was jigging it up and down furiously, so its swollen red face was a blur of continuous movement. Chaloner
felt sick just watching, and was not surprised it was making such a racket.

‘They told me Cromwell bolted,’ she shouted, snaking out a bony hand to snatch the coins he offered. ‘But Cromwell is a quiet
beast, and he never bolted before.’

‘What do
you
think happened?’ Chaloner asked.

‘I think Saul took a job he shouldn’t have done.’ Mrs Ibbot’s voice was bitter, and she rocked the baby more vigorously than
ever. ‘He told me he had given up that line of work, but the money was easy. And it was too much temptation for a weak man.’

‘What line of work?’ Chaloner grabbed the baby from her before she shook it senseless. It immediately
quietened, and contented itself with the occasional relieved sob.

She folded her arms. ‘Work for the Hectors, mostly – one of the gangs what operates round here. I told him to have nothing
to do with them, but he wouldn’t listen. Now he’s dead, and if it was an accident, then my name is Lady Castlemaine.’

‘You think the Hectors killed him?’ Chaloner’s heart sank. If so, then it boded ill for Hanse.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time they hired a driver, then murdered him to make sure he kept his mouth shut. You got a nice
way with babies, sir. This is the happiest she been all day.’

‘Did Saul ever mention a particular Hector? A contact, perhaps?’

Mrs Ibbot nodded slowly. ‘There was one he talked about – a woman called Mrs Riley. But I can’t say no more, because I don’t
want word getting back that I been talking about her. I got the young one to think of, and Saul told me that Mrs Riley can
be nasty.’