The Devlin Diary (20 page)
Authors: Christi Phillips
Tags: #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Historical, #Fiction
18 November 1672
Whitehall
To the Rue de Varenne
The English court is as Depraved and addicted to its Pleasures as the French, and no one in it more so than the King. Tonight’s entertainment at the Duke of York’s Palace of St. James has brought together the curdled cream of court Society: the King and the Duke, of course, and their faithful dogs Lord Arlington, Sir Thomas Clifford, and Sir Henry Reynolds, among others. And so I find myself amongst a bunch of sodden Wits, pox-ridden Rakes, loutish Lords and so-called Ladies who have come to see a performance by the King’s company of players. They are temporarily without a stage of their own, as their theatre on Drury Lane burnt to the ground last December. Each of the courtiers has already swilled a bottle or two of French wine and stuffed themselves with roasted Larks and sweet-meats and candied fruit. They loll about on cushions on the floor or drape themselves over couches. Considering the familiarity of some, they seem to mistake the couches for their own beds.
The private stage at the Duke of York’s residence is not large, but it makes up for its diminished size with extra Finery: velvet curtains, gilded woodwork, gold candelabra footlights. The backdrops
are the artful Work of the best court painters. But the theatre’s biggest advantage is that it is open only to the intimates of the Duke and the King. No mixing with the noisy hoi-polloi, the crowded stinking bodies, the masked and vizarded Strumpets in the pit.
Mr. Killigrew bounds onto the stage in full riding gear, urgently calling for his horse. Mrs. Howard, an actress whose best Features are amply displayed above the low edge of her Bodice, inquires of him, “Sir, where do you go in such a hurry?”
“To Hell,” he answers boldly, “to fetch up Oliver Cromwell to look after the affairs of England, for his successor is too busy swiving.”
Everyone, including the King, is made merry by this. Louis would never allow his crown to be debased by mirth and raillery, but Charles Stuart’s soul is as bankrupt as his Exchequer. After that devil Cromwell is hounded back to Hell, where he belongs, Mr. Wycherley recites scurrilous Verses concerning the men and ladies of the court, which are very Droll and make everyone clutch their bellies, agog with Laughter. Then Mrs. Howard returns in a rollicking scene in which she plays a young French miss (can you guess who this is?) who swears she will have no more Commerce with that known Enemy to virginity and chastity, the Monarch of Great Britain.
The Duke of York laughs loudest at this, even though he is an enemy to Virtue as villainous as his brother. Now that his wife the Duchess Anne has died (some say from the Pox that he gave her, some say from her own Immensity, for she was as wide as a pregnant heifer), he makes free with all of her Ladies while the King and his ministers squabble over his choice of a new wife: the successor to the throne will have no one but a Catholic and they say the country will not abide it. All I can say is that the Princess who makes her new home in this place will be aggrieved indeed.
Lord Rochester leaps onto the stage and announces he will read his Prologue to another author’s play, titled
The Empress of Morocco.
He says that the play is best forgot, except for the Part he writ. Rochester is a pet of the King’s, for he is pretty and witty, but he dares too often to speak the Truth, and make Satires of the
King’s whores, and seeking revenge they Scheme and Plot to undo him. They need not bother; Rochester is his own worst enemy. He himself boasts he has not been Sober two hours together in the past five years, and he offends the King as often as he pleases him. Tonight he is as much in his cups as ever, his fine clothes wrinkled, his wig askew, a bloodred glass of Tent spilling from his hand. He is a clown, yet people listen when he begins to recite.
“Who can abstain from Satire in this age? What nature wants I find supplied by rage. Some do for pimping, some for Treachery use; But none’s made great for being good or wise. Deserve a Dungeon, if you would be great, Rogues always are our ministers of state. Mean prostrate bitches, for a Bridewell fit, with England’s wretched Queen must equal sit.”
No one laughs at the end of his speech, and all eyes look to the King. Will His Majesty ban Rochester from court again and send him off to rusticate at his estate in Adderbury? Then Sir Henry Reynolds pipes up: “Rochester, why do you abuse this age so? It’s as pretty an honest, drinking, whoring age as a man would wish to live in.”
The King guffaws, and everyone laughs. Rochester has his Reprieve, but the Playacting is over for the evening. Most are sprawled about in various stages of Drunkenness. Those who are not already asleep swill more wine and gobble Sweets, or sneak away in illicit Pairs to the shadowy corners of the Palace or to the brisk outdoors and the dark, hidden places of St. James’s Park.
Sir Henry Reynolds leaves the theatre and scurries after one of the Queen’s ladies, following her down the gallery that leads to the palace Garden and the park. She is an unusual choice for him, for he is infamous for his Addiction to common wenches, and for spreading a Doctrine that it is cheaper and safer to lie with common wenches than with Ladies of Quality.
But that is hardly the worst thing he has done.
The young lady leads him on easily, she laughing softly and keeping a few paces ahead, he huffing and puffing through the Garden and then into the park. Once he is in the wilderness he loses sight of her, but perhaps Escape is what she had in mind from the start.
“My Lady Caroline,” he croons. “My little dove, do not be so coy, I have not the patience for it.” He takes a few steps forward into the darkness, then pulls up short. “What are you doing here?” he demands. “I have no use for your company.”
“If there were any justice in this world, Sir Henry,” says I, “your parts would be displayed on pikes above the London Bridge.”
When I first thrust the knife into his chest, his wide-eyed Expression is almost comic, as if he were about to snap his fingers and command one of his servants to fetch him a glass or a pipe. But on the second strike, the one that flays open his Innards, he utters a deep and wavering moan; and so I must cut his throat as well, so that Lady Caroline and the other courtiers in the park will not be alerted.
For after I lay him out on the ground there is much Work to do.
Fourth week of Michaelmas term
C
LAIRE UNLOCKED THE
gate to R bay, and Hoddy followed her inside.
“It’s the second book on the top shelf,” she told Hoddy as he pulled one of the benches over to the bookshelf. He climbed up on it and, being six inches taller than Claire, easily took down the volume and handed it to her.
“This isn’t it,” Claire said as she opened the cover of the book Hoddy had given her and read the title:
Enchiridion medicum = An enchiridion of the art of physick.
“What do you mean, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t the diary.” Claire got up on the bench next to him and perused the top shelf. “It doesn’t seem to be here.”
She and Hoddy methodically skimmed each of the other bookshelves in R bay, climbing up and down benches when necessary, running their fingertips over the books’ spines. Twenty minutes later, they still hadn’t found the diary. “Time to call in the cavalry,” Hoddy said at last.
Mr. Pilford was seated at his desk. “Dr. Donovan and I are looking for what we believe is a diary written during the late seventeenth century,” Hoddy told him. “Does it sound familiar to you?”
“I’ll need more information than that, certainly. Do you know which collection it’s in?”
“The Barclay collection,” Claire told him. “We know the year it was written, 1672, and that it was written in code—well, tachygraphy, or speed writing, similar to the sort Samuel Pepys used. We also know that Dr. Goodman was probably the last person to look at it.”
“Dr. Goodman?” The librarian repeated the name in a tone dripping with acrimony, self-righteousness, and an underlying horror, as if he’d just discovered something nasty smeared on the bottom of his shoe. His warm demeanor instantly turned cold. “Dr. Goodman was in the habit of taking books from the library without notifying me,” Mr. Pilford testily informed them. “And now he has died without returning them. It’s simply not on. In my long career as a librarian, Dr. Goodman was the worst reprobate I have ever encountered. Always rooting around in the stacks, holding on to books for months at a time, putting them back in the wrong places. He treated the Wren like his own private library. I tried many times to have him banned from here, but he always managed to pull rank.” Mr. Pilford had worked himself into a fit of anger. The pupils of his eyes narrowed to two silvery points. “Serves him right, what happened.”
“Surely you aren’t suggesting that Dr. Goodman deserved to die because he didn’t follow correct library procedure,” Hoddy said, astonished.
Mr. Pilford’s lips puckered and his bushy silver eyebrows rose high on his forehead. “It’s a library. Its contents belong to everyone. It’s a sacred trust.”
“I see,” Hoddy replied, chastened. Apparently Mr. Pilford thought death was a light sentence, in view of the crime.
“What I’d really like to know,” the librarian went on, “is when I’m going to get everything back.”
“Very soon,” Hoddy assured him. “I’ll make sure of it myself.”
“What do we do now?” Claire asked as they made a hasty retreat.
“Just follow me,” Hoddy said, “and look innocent.”
Hoddy took out his key ring when they got to Derek Goodman’s door in B staircase. “The F key opens
all
the doors?” Claire asked.
“This isn’t an F key,” Hoddy replied. “It’s a copy of one of the bedder’s keys.”
“What are you doing with a bedder’s key?”
“Let’s just say I came across it in my travels.” Hoddy unlocked the door and they quietly slipped inside.
“Good Lord,” Hoddy and Claire said in unison.
They took in their surroundings with a mixture of awe and dread. If the diary was here in Derek’s set, it wasn’t going to be easy to find. The main room was filled with reading matter: old books, new books, academic journals, magazines, bound dissertations, and piles of paper that looked suspiciously like lengthy, unbound manuscripts. The texts filled the bookshelves that lined the walls, overflowing into stacks on the tables and countless thigh-high heaps on the floor.
Hoddy walked over to the curtains, carefully keeping out of sight of the windows, and slowly drew the drapes closed.
“Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?” Claire asked.
“Draw the curtains?”
“Sneak into someone else’s set.”
“Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies.” Hoddy stopped to look around at the incredible profusion of books and other reading materials in the room. “One thing’s for certain,” he said. “No one could accuse Derek of being a slacker.”
Claire took a few steps farther into the room along a path that had been carefully carved out from the stacks of books. On the wall opposite the windows, poster-size enlargements of Derek’s two book covers were displayed, along with a giant black-and-white head shot of himself. The photographer had managed to capture the devilish gleam in his eyes and his not-quite-benign smile. “No one could accuse him of excess humility, either,” she added.
Hoddy suggested they begin in the study, using the logic that Derek’s most recently used materials would be near his desk. No doubt it was the reasonable thing to do, but Claire wondered if he felt, as she did, a certain sense of relief once they were out of sight of Derek’s photographic gaze. Unhappily, the adjacent study was even more densely packed than the front room. “It looks like he’s got
half the library in here,” Hoddy remarked. A path less than a meter wide led to a desk that faced a window overlooking New Court. The desktop was empty except for two items, an antique brass lamp and a glass paperweight shaped like an egg. Strangely empty. No computer, Claire pointed out.
“He didn’t use a school computer,” Hoddy said. “He preferred his own laptop.”
“Shouldn’t it be here?”
“I suppose, unless he had it with him…”
when he died,
Hoddy implied without saying.
“You think he was carrying his computer around at two o’clock in the morning?”
“Could have been. Maybe that’s why—”
“You believe someone killed him for his computer?”
“It’s possible,” Hoddy replied, although he didn’t sound completely convinced of it himself. “Or perhaps the police have impounded it. That’s probably the more reasonable conclusion.” He shook his head and made a sound that mingled disbelief with incomprehension. “When Andy first told me that he’d been murdered, I thought, ‘Why would anyone want to kill Derek Goodman?’ Then almost as quickly I thought of a half dozen reasons.”
“Such as?”
“He annoyed most everyone he met. He always assumed he was the smartest person in the room. He felt compelled to seduce every woman who got within arm’s length of him. It didn’t matter if they were someone else’s girlfriend, wife, sister. Even mother, I believe, in an instance or two. He was always crowing about his accomplishments and belittling everyone else’s. He could be a complete ass, behave in the most appalling ways, and he never cared about the consequences. At least he never cared about the consequences for anyone else. In short, Derek Goodman considered himself the center of the universe around which all the other paltry stars and planets revolved. Does that explain it?”
“Very well. But why didn’t you tell me this about him before, when we had dinner?”
“You didn’t ask. I didn’t think you’d be so susceptible to his charms.”
“Charms, indeed. Knowing what I know about him now, I only wonder that he wasn’t murdered years ago.”
“I suppose. It’s hard for me to believe that he was killed by someone he knew, because I
know
most of the people he knew. These aren’t the kind of people who kill other people just because they’re annoying. I mean, if that were true, human beings would quickly kill each other off until there was no one left.” Hoddy took a breath and looked around. “Tell you what. I’ll check the closets if you’ll search the bedroom. Then we’ll work through this mess together.”
Derek Goodman’s bedroom was bigger than the bedroom in Claire’s own set, large enough to contain a double bed with a few feet of space along each side. In contrast to the other rooms, it was uncluttered to the point of being austere. No books or boxes of manuscripts and journals on the floor. The bed was carefully made up, the silver-gray silk duvet and matching pillowcases smooth and unwrinkled. Two black lacquer bedside tables each held a lamp with a sleek silver base and gray lamp shade. Ivory silk curtains with a thin gray stripe draped the window looking out to the Backs. A twenty-inch flat-screen TV was mounted on the wall facing the foot of the bed.
Hoddy slouched in the doorway. “Very Zen Buddhist, in a Calvin Klein sort of way,” he announced. Which was the true reflection of Derek Goodman’s personality—the slightly mad, obsessive book collector, or the suave, urbane seducer? Certainly, Claire thought, this room was less of a surprise than the others.
“Nothing in the closets,” he went on. “So this is where he went to get away from all the books. Have you looked under the bed yet? Or in the dresser?”
Claire shook her head. “I feel a bit weird about going into his underwear drawer.”
Hoddy made a quick check of the dresser while Claire peeked under the bed. “Nothing under here,” she reported. “Not even any dust bunnies.”
“The bedder has been here,” Hoddy said. “The rubbish bins are empty.”
Claire gave the bath the once-over. Nothing unusual there. Like the bedroom, it clove to the “less is more” doctrine. Spotlessly clean, with only one of each necessary item in the bathtub/shower stall: soap, shampoo, shaving gel, disposable razor. Only a few miscellaneous things remained in the medicine cabinet: more disposable razors in blue, orange, and pink; a bottle of contact lens solution; athlete’s foot spray. No prescription medicine bottles; the police must have taken them. Claire closed the mirrored cabinet door and saw Hoddy standing behind her.
She turned around. “This is kind of creepy.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I hate the idea that when I die, strangers will be looking through all my things—”
“And drawing conclusions and making judgments.”
“Yes.” She shuddered at the thought.
“It’s a good argument for having children, though, isn’t it? At least it won’t be a stranger, it will be your own child.”
Claire mulled it over. “I can’t decide if that’s cynical or practical.”
“Perhaps it’s both.”
“Did Derek Goodman have any family?”
“A brother, who lives in Los Angeles. He’s supposed to be here for the memorial service,” Hoddy said as he walked back toward the study. Then he stopped, his gaze fixed on the bedroom door.
It was open, but they could both see that something was attached to the back, a large sheet of paper or a poster of some kind. Another one on the wall. Hoddy swung the door on its hinges as Claire moved closer.
Thumbtacked to the door and to the wall behind it were two maps of London—not current maps but copies of old maps. One was from December 1666, showing the devastation of the City after the Fire. The other had been drafted even earlier, in 1658, and included not only London but also Westminster and a bit of St. James’s Park. On each of the maps were small red stick-on dots. When Claire looked closely, she saw that the dots were numbered.
“They’re in the same location on both maps,” Hoddy pointed out just as she noticed it herself.
The dots numbered one and two were placed east of the Fleet River, number three in St. James’s Park, four near Pall Mall, five—with a question mark next to it—in Southwark, and six, again near the Fleet.
“What’s that?” Hoddy asked. They both held their breath and listened anxiously as a key turned in the lock of the front door, and someone stepped inside.