The King’s Evil

‘I don’t know.’

‘My lord,’ I said, growing a little impatient. ‘I understand that the only other person who knows of this man’s death is the servant who unlocked the pavilion this morning and found the body.’

Clarendon looked sharply at me. He did not take kindly to those who spoke before they were spoken to. ‘First things first. Have I your word that you will be discreet? I can’t afford a scandal at this time.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘If the news gets out, I shall know who to blame.’ He looked steadily at me. ‘You would not like to be my enemy.’

I refused to allow him to intimidate me. I had the King’s warrant. ‘May I have your permission to speak to the servant?’

‘Of course.’ Clarendon glanced at Milcote. ‘Who was it?’

‘Gorse, my lord.’

‘I don’t know him. Have him brought to me.’

‘Unfortunately he’s not here.’ Milcote lowered his voice. ‘The mourning rings.’

‘You may know,’ Clarendon said to me in a flat voice purged of emotion, ‘my wife died last month.’

‘Gorse is delivering mourning rings for my lady today,’ Milcote explained. ‘Mainly to former dependants and acquaintances. So he will be here and there all over London. He should be back after dinner. But I don’t know when.’

‘Is he trustworthy?’ Clarendon said.

‘I believe so, my lord – I knew him in his old place, and suggested him to the steward.’

‘I want this riddle solved,’ Clarendon said, still looking at me. ‘Do you understand? For my sake as well as the King’s. You may make what enquiries you need to in my house, but Milcote must accompany you at all times, inside and out.’

I nodded. ‘As you wish, my lord.’

‘My late wife was fond of that pavilion,’ he went on, his voice softening. ‘It was an old banqueting hall – she remembered it fondly from her youth. I wanted to tear it down and build it anew to match everything else. But she pleaded with me, and in the end I agreed to preserve at least part of it, though I insisted on its being remodelled to match the rest of my house and garden.’ He paused, staring at me. ‘Are you married, Mr Marwood?’

I shook my head.

‘No? If you ever are, you will find that it is a matter of perpetual compromise.’ His voice trailed away, and he turned his head to look out of the window.

‘Alderley’s body was found in the well, my lord,’ I said. ‘Was that part of the old building?’

‘Yes.’ He looked at me again, and his eyes were brighter than before. ‘Lady Clarendon was particularly attached to its water. She said it was always cold, even on the hottest day, and that the spring that feeds it is unusually pure. Indeed, she believed it to be the purest in London.’ His voice changed, and I knew without knowing how that he was furiously angry. ‘This body has sullied my wife’s well, Marwood. It has polluted the spring. Tell the King that I want this made clean for her sake.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

NOW CAME THE worst part, which I had been dreading from the start. Milcote and I returned to the pavilion to examine the body more closely. I postponed this unpleasant necessity by examining a wicket gate in the back wall of the garden. It was set in the temporary palisade that covered the place where the garden gates would eventually be installed. The wicket was locked and bolted. Milcote said it was rarely used, except occasionally by gardeners and the builders during the day.

Next I went up to inspect the main apartment on the first floor of the pavilion. The work was more advanced here than it was below. The windows were glazed and barred. At the top of the stairs was the door to the viewing platform. It too was locked and bolted.

At last I could no longer delay the inevitable. In the basement, Milcote and I stripped off Edward Alderley’s outer clothing. It was no easy matter, even with two of us, to manoeuvre his body. Alderley had always been a big, overweight man and, since I had last seen him, he had become even grosser.

Intimate contact with the dead, I thought, this prying into the consequences of death, should be growing easier for me since the events of the last twelve months. But custom had not yet formed a callus over my squeamishness; perhaps it never would.

‘How did Gorse know that someone was in the well?’ I asked as we were tugging Alderley’s arms from his sleeves.

‘The cover was off,’ Milcote said. ‘And he stumbled on Alderley’s hat, which was on the floor. He had the wit to look down the shaft.’

‘Why was he in the pavilion at all at that hour? Was that usual?’

‘No. But Mr Hakesby was expecting a delivery of lime, and he couldn’t get here himself until later. So I sent Gorse instead. He unlocked the garden door and then he came down to the basement to open the windows. The atmosphere is damp, and we try to keep the place aired. It was still dark down here, and he had a lantern.’

The body’s legs flopped on to the stone floor, and a long, lingering blast of wind erupted from the corpse’s belly.

‘God’s heart,’ Milcote said. ‘What a job is this. Does one ever get used to it?’

‘Probably not,’ I said curtly. How did he think I spent my days, I thought – laying out corpses?

I noted that the body was not in that phase of rigidity that corpses pass through after death. Perhaps the coldness of the well water had delayed its onset. If only, I thought, there were an exact way of measuring temporal gradations of decay, we should be able to deduce when Alderley had drowned, or at least to narrow down the time when it had happened. All we knew at present was that he had died between Saturday evening, when Hakesby and the builders had locked up, and this morning when Matthew Gorse had come to unlock the pavilion for the early delivery.

I suppressed the uncomfortable thought that there was another possibility: that Cat had been there with Hakesby on Saturday, and that Alderley had died before they had gone home for the night.

It took two of us to remove each of the boots because the leather was so saturated with water. Despite our labours, I was cold. The temperature in the basement seemed to drop lower and lower. The water chilled my hands and splashed over my clothes.

‘Who has a key?’ I said, panting, when Alderley’s feet were bare, exposing untrimmed nails like pale talons.

Milcote lobbed a boot into the corner. ‘Mr Hakesby. I have a set, too – I have all the household keys. My lord has another set, though those are never used and lie locked in his closet. Then there’s the steward’s – Gorse would have used the pavilion key from there.’

‘And the house and garden?’

‘Locked as tight as a drum. We take no chances, not after those attacks on my lord. During the night, the mastiffs are loose in the garden, and watchmen make an hourly circuit. There are two porters awake in the house, and lanterns in the forecourt.’

‘Then how did Alderley get here?’ I asked.

Milcote shrugged. ‘It’s a perfect mystery. Unless he came during the day, while the men were here. And he was already dead when they locked up.’

This was an echo of my own thoughts, and it led me back to Hakesby and Cat. I turned to Alderley and unstrapped his belt. The breeches were almost as hard to remove as the boots had been.

Death makes a man small as well as making him ridiculous. When we had stripped Alderley to his shirt, he looked shrunken and as vulnerable as a child. Milcote held up the lantern and I examined the body as best I could. There were grazes on the forearms and shoulders, and much broken skin on the fingers. They told their own grim story of a drowning man struggling in the water, enclosed by the sheer walls of the well. I felt the skull and found a bruise on the forehead.

Had he hit his head as he was falling down the well? Or had someone hit him beforehand?

Crouching, we rolled him on to his back again. Milcote watched closely as I turned my attention to the pockets. Alderley had been carrying a purse containing nearly thirty shillings in silver and two pounds in gold. That was a small fortune to most people; but poverty was a relative condition.

There were also two keys on a ring. One was made of blackened iron and had a long shank. The other was much smaller, and far more delicate: it appeared to be made of silver, and had a finely wrought ring at the top that contained what looked like a monogram. I held up the second key to the light of the window, but the letters were so entwined and so clogged with delicate arabesques that I could not even distinguish whether there were two or three of them.

Next, in an inner pocket, I found a sodden bundle of papers. I tried to separate the leaves from each other but the paper tore.

‘Have you a pouch or bag I could use?’ I asked.

‘What?’ Milcote dragged his eyes away from Alderley’s possessions. ‘A pouch?’

‘I’ll take these with me. I need something to put them in.’

He nodded. ‘Of course.’

He went away and came back with a small bag of coarse canvas, its top secured with a drawstring. ‘Will this do?’

‘Admirably.’

He opened the bag, shook out its contents, a dozen or so newly forged nails, on the floor, and passed it to me. I put the papers, the key and money into it.

‘He used to live in Barnabas Place in Holborn,’ I said. ‘A big place – you could house an army in it. Was he still there?’

‘No. He had to sell it and most of the contents to pay his own debts. But he retained an interest in another house nearby, and he was living there. In Fallow Street.’

‘Did you ever go there?’

Milcote shook his head. ‘We met at a tavern or he came here. He grumbled about how small his lodgings were. And it was mortgaged, too, and he’d had to let part of it to a carpenter.’ He gave me a rueful smile. ‘I think he was ashamed. He didn’t want me to see how mean his condition had become. In truth, I didn’t know him that well, but I felt sorry for him.’

I turned back to the body. Alderley’s mouth had fallen open. I took up the sword. It was a narrow blade of fine steel. Two silk ribbons, one red and one blue, had been knotted around the hilt. Perhaps some lady had given them to him to wear as her favour. A design had been engraved on the blade just below the hilt. I held the sword up to the light and recognized the form of a pelican eating its young, the Alderley crest.

‘It’s an old Clemens Horn,’ Milcote said. He stretched out his hand and touched the blade with lingering respect, as a man might touch the hand of a beautiful woman who did not belong to him. ‘German. Must be nigh on fifty years old, but you won’t find a better sword.’

‘I should like to see the well,’ I said.

It was a relief to move away from the body. Milcote and I lifted off the cover and laid it on the floor. It moved easily. A man could have removed it by himself, if necessary. Or, for that matter, a woman.

Milcote crouched on the edge and held the lantern over the void. I could see nothing beyond its light. At my request, he took a rope and attached it to the ring at the top of the lantern. He lowered the light into the well. It glistened on cleanly cut masonry – the shaft was lined with stone, not brick.

Another thought struck me – and again I kept it to myself. I liked what I had seen of Milcote but he and I served different masters.

The lantern twisted and turned as it descended. It seemed to take weeks for it to reach the water.

‘Mr Hakesby measured it,’ Milcote said. ‘It’s about forty feet to the water level. And the depth of the water is another twenty feet, more or less.’

I remembered the bruises and scrapes on Alderley’s body. Could he swim? I imagined him thrashing about in the well, desperately trying to find a handhold, a toehold, on that smooth, curved masonry. And all the time, the water drawing him down into its cold embrace.

I could not afford these thoughts, and I seized on a distraction. ‘How did you get the body out?’ It was such an obvious question that I was ashamed that it hadn’t occurred to me before.

‘Gorse and I used the hoist.’ Milcote waved his free hand in the direction of the wooden framework I had noticed in the corner of the cellar behind the well, beside a pile of scaffolding. ‘It’s the masons’. They used it when they were repointing the well. Gorse went down, and he got a couple of hooks in Alderley’s belt.’

‘He must be a capable man,’ I said. ‘Rather him than me.’

‘He’s seen worse, I daresay,’ Milcote said. ‘He told me he was once apprenticed to a butcher, though he and his master did not suit. But before he left his indentures, he must have moved his fair share of carcases.’

The lantern was swaying a few inches above the black and oily surface of the water.

‘Dear God,’ I cried. ‘What’s that?’

Something was moving on the water, something dark and glistening, something alive.

Milcote laughed. ‘It’s Alderley’s periwig, sir.’ He laughed again, and it seemed to me there was an edge of hysteria to his mirth. ‘What did you think it could be?’

‘I scarcely know.’

‘Shall I send Gorse or someone down again to fetch it?’

‘As far as I’m concerned, you can leave it there to rot.’

‘Someone will want it. It must be worth a few pounds.’

Milcote hauled up the lantern. ‘I wonder,’ he said, turning aside to drape the coil of rope over the hoist. ‘I believe that perhaps Alderley’s death was an accident after all.’ He faced me again and went on in a low, rapid tone, ‘Suppose he came here of his own accord during the day – bribed his way into the garden – and hid himself here, meaning to rob the house when all was quiet. And then in the dark, he stumbled …’

His voice trailed away. What of the mastiffs, I thought, the night-watchmen, the bolts, the bars, locks and all the other precautions that Clarendon took to keep his palace safe from intruders?

‘You must know, sir,’ Milcote went on with sudden urgency, ‘Lord Clarendon has many enemies. If someone like the Duke of Buckingham heard of this, he would find ways to use it against him – perhaps even accuse him of arranging Alderley’s murder. Surely it would be better for everyone – for the King and the Duke of York, as well as my lord – if the body weren’t here?’

‘What do you mean?’ I said, my voice cold.

‘Lord Clarendon is the last man to wish to stand in the way of justice, but Mr Alderley is dead, and we can’t change that, either by accident or by his own design.’ He gestured at the dead man, shrouded in his long shirt. ‘Couldn’t he be found somewhere else? It would be an innocent subterfuge, which would harm no one, least of all him. Indeed, it would protect Alderley’s reputation. Otherwise men might say that he intended some knavery by coming here.’

He held the lantern higher, trying to make out my expression, and waited for me to speak.

‘And it would protect Lord Clarendon, too, in this difficult time,’ he rushed on. ‘The poor man has enough troubles already without this. I wish to spare him the addition of this one. He is a good man, sir, and an honourable one, whatever his enemies say.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ I said.

‘All we would need do is move Alderley out of the garden and leave him in one of the market gardens near the Oxford road.’ Milcote followed me out of the basement. ‘Perhaps in a pond, to explain the water … Then it would look as if he had been robbed and murdered by thieves. No one could say any differently.’

I said nothing. We replaced the cover on the well and climbed the stairs in silence. At the door, I waited for Milcote to find the key.

He shook his head as if reproving himself. ‘Forgive me, sir. You must think my wits are astray. Pray forget what I said. I hardly know what I’m saying.’

After we had searched the body and examined the rest of the pavilion, I dined privately with Milcote in the steward’s quarters. He did not press me further with his arguments for moving the body. I had the impression that part of him was ashamed of having suggested it. Not that I condemned him – indeed, I honoured him for it in one way, because I realized that his loyalty to Lord Clarendon lay behind it.

I scarcely noticed what I ate, and we had little conversation. My mind was full of what I had learned in the last two hours. Our inspection of the pavilion had made it clear that the lower windows were barred and the upper ones were secure. The roof appeared intact. There was a viewing platform at the top, but the door to it, which was at the head of the staircase that had brought us down to the basement, was bolted and barred from the inside.

In other words, the door from the garden appeared to be the only point of access. And there were – as both Milcote and later the steward confirmed – only four keys to it: Lord Clarendon’s, the steward’s, Milcote’s – and Hakesby’s.

Before we left the pavilion, I had examined both the lock and Milcote’s copy of the key. I was no expert but I could see that it was a modern lock; the wards of the key were designed to turn four levers within the lock, and each was a different size from the others. To copy a key like this, I suspected, would require the services of a skilled locksmith. There was no sign of the mechanism having been forced.

To add to the mystery, the garden was full of people by day and overlooked from the house. No stranger could have passed through unobserved. By night, the garden gates were locked, the dogs let loose and the night watchmen patrolled at regular intervals.

True, I had solved another, lesser mystery to my private satisfaction, or at least discovered a plausible solution to it: if Hakesby had been here to work on the pavilion, then Cat might well have accompanied him at least some of the time. Alderley could have caught sight of her on one of his visits to Milcote.

Time was running out. The body could not be kept a secret for long, not in a world where the Duke of Buckingham and his allies were working so industriously against Lord Clarendon. The Duke of York was determined to avoid Alderley’s corpse becoming an embarrassment to his father-in-law, and therefore to himself. The King seemed equally determined, though as ever his motives were difficult to discern; perhaps he simply wanted to oblige his brother, or perhaps he had his own reasons for not wanting to lend ammunition to the enemies of Lord Clarendon, his former Lord Chancellor and his loyal companion and adviser during the long years of exile.

From Clarendon’s point of view, there were only two outcomes that would help him: the first was discovering how Alderley had died and bringing his killer, if there had been one, to justice in a way that completely absolved Clarendon himself; the other was far simpler – Milcote’s suggestion of moving the body elsewhere. If the King ordered the latter, it would be done. But not otherwise.

What worried me most was this: if, as seemed probable, Alderley had been murdered, then the most likely killer was Catherine Lovett. As I knew only too well, she was a woman who had few scruples when her passions were engaged, and Edward Alderley had given her every reason to hate him.

I would not betray her – or not willingly, for we had survived too much together for that. But if anyone else stumbled on the Clarendon House connection between her and Edward Alderley, then I would not give much for her chances – or indeed for my own, for I had already concealed what I knew of her.

If they hanged the daughter of a Regicide for Edward Alderley’s murder, would it not be convenient for everyone except Hakesby and myself? Moreover, I had given Cat forewarning that Alderley had somehow found her. Might that be construed as making me an accessory to his murder?

As the meal neared its end, I discussed at least some of this with George Milcote. He could not have been more helpful, though he was careful what he said when our conversation touched on anything that might affect the honour of Lord Clarendon. I liked his loyalty to his master, and I regretted that the circumstances obliged me to lie to him, at least by omission.

‘When did you last see Alderley?’ I asked.

‘Last week. We met at the Three Tuns at Charing Cross.’

‘He seemed as usual?’

‘Yes. He was in a good humour. We were discussing an investment of mine. I have a small share in a privateer, and he’d offered to buy it.’

I remembered the purse we had found. ‘He wasn’t that poor, then?’

‘No. I gathered that his affairs had taken a turn for the better.’ There was a ghost of a smile on Milcote’s face. ‘He paid for our wine.’

‘I must speak as soon as possible to the servant who found the body,’ I said. ‘Gorse, was it?’

‘Yes – Matthew Gorse. Will you come back here in the evening, or shall I send him to you?’

‘I shall need to come back here at some point,’ I said with more certainty than I felt. ‘Don’t let him leave until I’ve seen him.’

To maintain the fiction that I had never heard of Hakesby, I asked Milcote who he was, and whether he was to be trusted.

‘Mr Pratt vouched for him,’ he said. ‘In fact it was my lady – the late Lady Clarendon, that is – who suggested him.’

‘Pratt?’

‘Mr Roger Pratt – the architect. He designed the house for my lord, but he was unable to take on the pavilions.’

‘How did Lady Clarendon know of Mr Hakesby?’

‘I don’t think she ever mentioned it.’ Milcote shrugged. ‘No reason why she should have done, of course. The important thing is that Mr Pratt vouched for him. I understand that he has worked with both Dr Wren and Dr Hooke, and they speak highly of him too.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘Henrietta Street – he has a Drawing Office at the sign of the Rose. He handles the overseeing of the builders as well as the surveying and designing. I own I was a little concerned when I first met him – he has a palsy or ague, poor man – but it seems not to affect the quality of his work. He has able people working under him. I know my lady valued his willingness to indulge her desire to retain so much of the old banqueting house in the new building. Will you go and see him now?’

‘Yes,’ I said, with intentional vagueness, ‘I must see Mr Hakesby. And as soon as possible.’

But I had other things to do first. There was no reason to mention that to Mr Milcote.

It was still raining. I decided to take a coach.

I walked along Piccadilly in search of a hackney, trying to avoid the spray from passing vehicles and horses. Perhaps it was because of the rain but I couldn’t find a coach for hire at the nearest stand. I went on, pulling my hat down and huddling into my cloak.

William Chiffinch had sent me to meet Lady Quincy. And it was also he who had sent me here. But he was the King’s creature in all he did, for there lay his best chance of advancing his own interest. Was the King behind both these commissions? Did that mean they were somehow connected?

Opposite the Royal Mews, liveried servants were opening the great gates of Wallingford House, where the Duke of Buckingham lived when he was in town. I stopped to watch. Outriders appeared, followed by an enormous coach, which was decorated with golden lions and peacocks and drawn by six matching horses. Afterwards came four running footmen, who held on to the straps behind the coach and splashed through the puddles, careless of the filth thrown up on their clothes.

Now that he had been freed from the Tower, the Duke had no intention of hiding his presence in London. The coach drew up outside the front door, which opened immediately. The Duke himself appeared at the head of the steps. He was a tall, florid gentleman in a blond periwig and a plumed hat. He was dressed in a silver coat and blue breeches, with the matching blue of the Garter ribbon across his chest, and the Garter star itself gleaming over his heart. He waved at the small crowd that had gathered, tossed them a handful of silver and climbed into the coach.

The crowd cheered him as he drove off towards Whitehall. I walked on in the direction of the hackney stand by Charing Cross.