The King’s Evil. Andrew TaylorЧитать онлайн книгу.

      ON MY WAY to Whitehall, I was tempted to call at Henrietta Street and warn Cat Lovett of what had happened to her cousin. But prudence prevailed. I didn’t want to risk advertising the connection between us. Besides, I was in a hurry to make my report.

      They were the excuses I made for myself. Really, though, I was mortally afraid that she might already know of Edward Alderley’s death, that she had known ever since the moment it happened. The words she had said two days ago in the New Exchange haunted my memory: ‘I wish I had killed him.’

      I ran into Mr Williamson when I returned to Whitehall – almost literally, for he was coming out of the Court Gate into the street as I was going in. I had to jump aside to avoid colliding with him.

      ‘Marwood,’ he snapped. ‘When will you be back?’

      ‘I’m not sure, sir. When the King and Mr Chiffinch—’

      ‘How can I be expected to carry on the business of the Gazette without your assistance?’ Irritation had scraped away the polish that Oxford and London had given Williamson’s voice, revealing the uncompromising vowels of his northern upbringing. ‘I have my own responsibilities, as you know, without troubling myself with those damned women of yours.’

      It took me a moment to realize that he meant the women who trudged the streets of London with bundles of the Gazette. I had pushed the problems with our distribution network so far into the back of my mind that I had almost forgotten they were there.

      ‘For reasons I don’t understand,’ he went on, warming himself at the fire of his own eloquence, ‘the day-to-day conduct of the newspaper seems impossible without you, as well as other routine tasks in my office. Why this should be, I cannot tell. It is insupportable that Mr Chiffinch should have you at his beck and call whenever he wishes, disrupting the work of my department. I shall take steps to remedy it. But, in the meantime, I require your presence in Scotland Yard as soon as possible.’

      I bowed. ‘Yes, sir. Believe me, I wish it myself.’

      He sniffed, gave me a curt nod and swept out into the street to hail a hackney.

      I made my way to the Matted Gallery. There was a door from here that led to the King’s Backstairs, the province of Mr Chiffinch. I asked one of the guards to send word to him that I was here and hoped to speak to him.

      While I waited, I studied the picture of the Italian widow again, and decided that she looked nothing like Lady Quincy. But I did not want to run the risk of Chiffinch finding me in front of the painting, so I walked up and down for a quarter of an hour until a servant approached me. He conducted me to the gloomy chamber off the Backstairs where Chiffinch and I had met once before, earlier in the year. The small window was barred and had a view of the river. The rain was beating against the glass and the room smelled of sewage. It was an uncomfortable place that in my limited experience of it existed solely for uncomfortable meetings.

      Chiffinch was already there. It was not yet dark, but he had had the candles lit. He was sitting at the table with the window behind him and a pile of papers and the usual bottle of wine before him. He listened intently while I told him of what I had learned at Clarendon House and Fallow Street.

      I described Alderley’s body, and the unresolved mystery of how he came to be in the locked pavilion in the garden, and the ambiguous circumstances of his death. I gave him an account of my conversation with Lord Clarendon, mentioning both my lord’s anger at this desecration of his late wife’s pavilion and his wish to avoid scandal. I added that his gentleman, Mr Milcote, had hinted that it might be to everyone’s benefit if the body could be moved elsewhere.

      ‘Ah,’ Chiffinch said. ‘Interesting.’ He waved his finger at me. ‘Proceed, Marwood.’

      When I came to what had happened in Fallow Street, I told Chiffinch no lies but I rationed the truth. I mentioned the unexpected signs of recent affluence. I told him about the so-called Bishop, Alderley’s visitor on Friday evening, whom Alderley had advised to go to Watford to tell them about Jerusalem. But I omitted the painting of the woman whose eyes had been gouged out: the woman in old-fashioned clothes who looked like Cat Lovett.

      Chiffinch said nothing while I talked, which was unlike him. When I finished, he still did not speak. He ran his finger around and around the rim of his wine glass. After a while, a high wavering whine filled the air, growing gradually louder.

      I shifted in my chair. ‘Should I send to Watford tomorrow, sir, to enquire about newly arrived preachers? I could write directly to Mr Williamson’s correspondent there. And I myself could call on this Mr Turner at Barnard’s Inn about the mortgage. Also, I have arranged to go back to Clarendon House to question the servant who—’

      Suddenly the whine stopped.

      ‘Hakesby,’ Chiffinch said.

      I stared open-mouthed at him.

      Chiffinch regarded me coldly. ‘Hakesby,’ he repeated, wrinkling his nose. ‘I know the name is familiar to you because you yourself mentioned the man to me not a year ago. The surveyor-architect who has an office near Covent Garden. Well respected by his peers, I understand. And, as you and I both know, a man who has previously been of interest to me.’

      I recovered as quickly as I could. ‘Yes, sir, I remember him well.’ I was on dangerous ground for Chiffinch had helped to arrange my meeting in the Banqueting House with Lady Quincy. He might reasonably expect that it had jogged my memory about Hakesby as well as Cat. He had known that Cat had found a refuge with Hakesby at the end of last year.

      ‘Did you know that this man was the architect working on Lord Clarendon’s pavilion?’ Chiffinch said in a silken voice.

      ‘Yes, sir. Mr Milcote – Lord Clarendon’s gentleman – chanced to mention it this morning, but I thought it—’

      ‘Did it not occur to you that there might be a connection?’ Chiffinch’s tone was heavy with sarcasm. ‘We already knew the Lovett woman was working under an assumed name as Hakesby’s servant, and that the King was content it should be so as long as she didn’t make trouble. He is not a vengeful man. When Lady Quincy told him that Alderley was threatening Mistress Lovett again, he was even content that you should warn her of the fact. Some might think that he’s too tender-hearted, but it is not my place to question his decisions.’

      I tried to put the matter in the best light I could: ‘I thought it unlikely Mr Hakesby would take a woman to a site where he was working.’

      ‘This woman is the daughter of a Regicide: and by all accounts, she’s a fanatic like her father – a madwoman who hates her cousin Alderley so much that she stabbed him in the eye. He was lucky to escape alive. And she tried to burn down the house about their ears as her uncle and aunt slept.’ For once in his life, Chiffinch sounded genuinely shocked. ‘That a woman should do so foul a thing to her family, to the cousins who sheltered her,’ he went on. ‘Why, it beggars belief and turns it out of doors. And her cousin Alderley is now found drowned, probably murdered, in the very place where Hakesby is working. Does it not strike you as significant?’

      ‘I grant it’s a curious coincidence, sir.’

      ‘A