Susanna Gregory - The Piccadilly Plot

‘I have just seen his body. He was shot while showing off with a gun — an accident, apparently. It was witnessed by several people, including Leighton, Hyde, and your friend O’Brien and his wife.’

‘Kitty?’ Williamson was stricken. ‘I must go to her at once. To comfort her!’

‘What about O’Brien?’ asked Chaloner archly. ‘Does he not warrant comfort, too?’

Williamson glanced at him sharply, and Chaloner wished he had held his tongue. Alluding to the Spymaster’s dalliance with his old friend’s wife had been unwarranted and reckless. He tried to think of a way to mitigate the damage, but Lester was already talking.

‘Far too many people connected to this matter have died,’ he said unhappily. ‘Turner, Lucas, Proby, Congett, Reyner and his mother, Elliot, Cave, and now Newell.’

‘What matter?’ asked Chaloner. ‘Precisely?’

Williamson looked pained. ‘That is the problem: we are not sure. However, we suspect that two organisations are at loggerheads: the Piccadilly Company and the Adventurers. Deaths have occurred in both.’

Chaloner played devil’s advocate. ‘The Adventurers cannot be involved in anything untoward. The King is a member, and so is the Queen and half the Privy Council.’

‘I doubt whatever is underway involves the entire corporation,’ explained Williamson shortly. ‘However, there are rumours that something terrible will unfold next Wednesday-’

‘St Frideswide’s Day,’ put in Lester helpfully.

‘-and it must be stopped,’ Williamson finished. ‘Unfortunately, we cannot do it with the resources currently at our disposal.’

‘Doines is Williamson’s best man, and you saw what he is like,’ elaborated Lester, oblivious to the Spymaster’s irritated grimace. ‘So if we are to thwart it, we shall need other help. Yours.’

‘No,’ said Chaloner, standing abruptly and wondering whether he would be allowed to walk out. As he did so, his eye fell on a pile of letters on a table, and he recognised the signature of the one on top. It raised another question, but it was not one he would be able to ponder until he was alone again.

‘Please wait,’ said Williamson softly, and Chaloner suddenly became aware of the lines of strain in his face. ‘I could use your family to coerce you, as I have done in the past — and as I am currently doing to Lester — but I would rather you helped me willingly.’

‘I am sure you would,’ said Chaloner. ‘Swaddell is gone, so you are desperate to replace-’

‘Swaddell has not gone anywhere,’ interrupted Williamson tiredly. ‘The tale of our break is a canard, so he can inveigle himself into the confidence of those we believe to be plotting. At great personal risk, I might add. The only people who know this are Lester, and now you.’

Chaloner was horrified on Swaddell’s behalf. ‘Sharing such information is hardly-’

‘Swaddell is my friend, and I have put his life in your hands by confiding in you. If there was another way to make you trust me, I would have taken it, believe me. But I am faced with a crisis, and I need the help of an experienced operative with the right connections.’

‘I have no connections,’ said Chaloner truthfully.

‘At least listen to what we have to say before turning us down,’ said Lester reasonably.

‘You are uncomfortable here in my office,’ surmised Williamson astutely. ‘Would it help if we went somewhere else? We could sit in my carriage and ride around London.’

‘A coffee house,’ determined Chaloner. They were public places, which meant Williamson was less likely to try to harm him. ‘The Paradise by Westminster Hall.’

Williamson scowled. ‘Certainly not. It will be busy, and we need to converse in private.’

‘It has private booths at the rear,’ said Lester quickly, as Chaloner stepped towards the door to indicate the interview was over. ‘And we are all in need of a medicinal draught.’

‘Very well,’ conceded Williamson reluctantly. ‘But you are paying.’

‘I cannot be long,’ warned Chaloner, supposing there was no harm in listening. He might learn something useful with no obligation to reciprocate. ‘I have an audience with the Queen.’

‘And you say you have no connections,’ said Lester wonderingly.

The Paradise was one of three establishments — the others were Hell and Purgatory — that sold food and drink in Westminster’s Old Palace Yard. They were sometimes taverns, sometimes ordinaries and sometimes coffee houses, depending on the whims of their owners. The Paradise was currently a coffee house, although in keeping with the eccentricity of the place, the upper floor was given over to selling fishing tackle and an assortment of patented medicines.

Inside, it was hazy not only with smoke from the coffee beans, but from a badly swept chimney. It was dominated by a large oval table with a slit up the centre that allowed the owner to walk inside it and refill his customers’ dishes. His patrons were a mixture of the black-gowned lawyers who worked in the Palace of Westminster, and the ruffians who inhabited the slums that surrounded it. They were discussing the Post Office, an institution notorious for opening any letters entrusted to its care. The lawyers were of the opinion that anyone who committed words to paper without hiring one of them to make sure they could not be misinterpreted had only himself to blame; the rest thought a man’s correspondence was his own affair, and that the Post Office had no right to pry.

Chaloner started to sit at the main table, but Lester grabbed his arm and pointed to a secluded cubicle at the back.

‘We cannot discuss our problems in front of an audience. You know that. The booth is private, but in full view — Williamson cannot do anything untoward without at least a dozen men seeing.’

Williamson shot Chaloner a reproachful glance as he led the way towards it, although Chaloner felt their past encounters gave him the right to be wary. Lester placed several coins on the table, and coffee was brought. Chaloner sipped it, surprised to discover it was almost palatable. He set the dish back on the table, and indicated that Lester and Williamson were to begin their explanations.

‘I suppose we must start with Lester’s sister,’ Williamson obliged. ‘She lives in the Crown on Piccadilly, and was the first to notice that something untoward was happening.’

‘Not Ruth?’ asked Chaloner, startled. ‘She is Lester’s sister as well as Elliot’s wife?’

Lester nodded. ‘I thought you knew. She said you have been to visit her twice, and I know she would have mentioned me. I assumed you went to pick her brains.’

‘Such as they are,’ muttered Williamson acidly.

Something snapped clear in Chaloner’s mind when resentment suffused Lester’s face. ‘ She is the reason you are working with Williamson! He said he was using your family to coerce you.’

‘He threatened to commit her to Bedlam otherwise,’ said Lester. He glared at the Spymaster. ‘There was no need to resort to such tactics — I would have helped anyway. I am a patriotic man, which is why I joined the navy.’

Williamson ignored him. ‘Ruth told Lester that something peculiar was happening in the Crown, and rather rashly, he decided to investigate.’

‘I did not know there was anything to investigate at first,’ elaborated Lester. ‘Ruth is given to imagining things, you see. But I soon realised she was right — it is the Piccadilly Company’s headquarters. I managed to eavesdrop once, although I am not very good at that sort of thing, and they hired Brinkes to stop it happening again.’

‘What did you hear?’ asked Chaloner.

‘A discussion about a plot to kill one of their members. The Queen wants Pratt dead, apparently.’