Susanna Gregory: The Piccadilly Plot

Groaning, Elliot struggled to his feet, hauling out the blade as he did so. It slipped from his fingers to clatter on the cobbles. He lurched towards Lester, who escorted him away. No one made any attempt to stop them.

‘Well,’ murmured Dugdale, arms folded. ‘I suppose that was a neat end to this insalubrious affair. The King’s singer is speared, but at least his killer did not escape unscathed.’

‘Is Elliot dead?’ asked Cave weakly. ‘Did I kill him?’

‘Almost certainly,’ replied Dugdale, prodding the dropped dagger with the toe of his elegant shoe. It was stained red to the hilt.

‘Good,’ breathed Cave. Then his head lolled suddenly, and the breath hissed out of him.

Chaloner sat back on his heels, overwhelmed by the stupidity of it all.

As it would not be right to leave Cave in the street, Chaloner paid a carter to transport the body to the Westminster charnel house. He had no idea whether corpses from The Strand would be welcome there, but he was not sure where else to take it. Dugdale was right in that much of London was still a mystery to him, and while he knew exactly how to dispose of cadavers in Amsterdam, The Hague, Paris, Lisbon, Bruxelles, Hamburg, Venice, Madrid and several other major cities, he was not sure what to do with one in his own country.

‘We had better make sure the charnel-house keeper will accept him,’ he said to Dugdale after the cart and its grim cargo had rattled away. ‘As you pointed out, Cave held a royal appointment, so it is our duty to see him treated with respect.’

‘I am not setting foot in a place like that,’ declared Dugdale with a fastidious shudder. ‘You go. I shall return to the Earl, and inform him that you are unavoidably delayed. He will be irked to be kept waiting, but I shall do my best to mollify him.’

Chaloner suspected he would do nothing of the kind, and that the opportunity would be used to blacken his name. But it could not be helped — common decency dictated that he should ensure Cave’s body was properly looked after, and that was that.

The Westminster charnel house was located in a narrow lane near the Thames, between a granary and a warehouse where coal was stored. It was an unprepossessing place, in a particularly dingy area. By the time Chaloner arrived Cave had been delivered, and the cart and its driver had gone so the lane was deserted and eerily quiet. He opened the door with some reluctance, grimacing at the damp chilliness and stench of decay that immediately wafted out at him.

The charnel house comprised a mortuary at the back, with two handsomely appointed chambers at the front where the owner went through the formalities of death with the bereaved. John Kersey had made a fortune from dealing with the dead, partly by offering guided tours to wealthy ghouls, but also from the small museum he had established to display some of the more unusual artefacts he had collected over the years. He was a neat, dapper little man, whose elegant clothes were made by bespoke tailors. He did not, as Chaloner had first assumed, deck himself out in items reclaimed from corpses.

That morning, he was entertaining a friend, and Chaloner’s heart sank when he recognised the loudly ebullient tones of Richard Wiseman, Surgeon to the King. Kersey kept Wiseman supplied with specimens, some of which were dissected publicly at Chyrurgeons’ Hall. It was a grisly business, and may have explained why Wiseman always chose to wear red. Coupled with the fact that he possessed a head of thick auburn curls, and was a large man with an immensely powerful physique, he made for an imposing figure. He considered himself Chaloner’s friend, but although the spy respected Wiseman’s courage and honesty, he found it difficult to like a man who was so disagreeably arrogant.

‘Good morning,’ said Kersey with a pleasant smile. ‘What can we do for you today?’

‘The body that just arrived,’ began Chaloner. ‘It is-’

‘Toted in like a sack of onions,’ interrupted Kersey disapprovingly. ‘By a grubby carter from The Strand. Do folk have no sense of decorum?’

Chaloner wondered how he could ask such a question when he let some of his charges go to a far worse fate than being lugged along a hall. Wiseman guessed what he was thinking.

‘I perform anatomies in the name of science,’ he declared loftily. ‘However, I shall leave that particular cadaver alone, because it is John Cave, one of the Chapel Royal musicians.’

‘Do you not dissect musicians, then?’ asked Chaloner, a little acidly.

‘Not ones with Court appointments. The King attends my Public Anatomies, and I cannot imagine him wanting to watch one where he is acquainted with the subject.’

Chaloner was not so sure about that: the King liked to think of himself as a scientist. He turned to Kersey. ‘I arranged for Cave to be brought here. I did not know where else to suggest.’

‘You did the right thing,’ said Kersey kindly. ‘Do not worry: I shall look after him.’

Chaloner nodded his thanks. His journey had been unnecessary: he should have remembered that Kersey was solicitous of his charges, especially the important or famous ones.

‘You will have to contact the Chapel Royal choir and ask his colleagues to arrange a funeral, Kersey,’ said Wiseman helpfully. ‘As far as I am aware, he had no family.’

But Kersey was looking at Chaloner, doing so rather uneasily. ‘There was an awful lot of blood. You did not kill him, did you? If so, I hope you are not expecting me to disguise the fact, because I do not engage in that sort of activity. Well, not without a very good reason.’

‘He died in a brawl,’ objected Chaloner, offended. ‘I had nothing to do with it.’

‘You have no right to sound indignant,’ said Kersey. ‘Given that you have been associated with so many premature deaths in the past. Indeed, there have been times when my domain has contained nothing but folk who have arrived here as a result of your investigations.’

‘But not today.’ Chaloner felt the accusation was unjust. It was hardly his fault that the Earl was in the habit of ordering him to explore dangerous matters.

‘You have only been home a week, but you are already embroiled in something deadly,’ scolded Wiseman. ‘And it is doing you no good. You glowed with health and vitality when you first returned, but now you are pale and mangy.’

Chaloner was disinclined to tell him how he had been spending his nights. He did not have the energy to deal with the inevitable indignation that would arise when Wiseman learned that the Earl, a man he admired for some inexplicable reason, was being relieved of the bricks and wood intended for his house.

‘I should go,’ he said instead. ‘Clarendon is expecting me.’

Kersey was surprised. ‘Do you not want to see Cave? I covered him with a nice clean cloth.’

Chaloner shook his head and made for the door, keen to answer the Earl’s summons before the delay saw him in too much trouble. Wiseman and Kersey followed.

‘I am sorry Cave is dead,’ said the surgeon. ‘He had a lovely voice, and everyone was delighted when he returned from Tangier to rejoin the Chapel Royal choir. Henry O’Brien will be especially distressed — since Cave returned, he has refused to sing duets with anyone else.’

‘Who is Henry O’Brien?’ asked Chaloner.

Wiseman regarded him as though he were short of a few wits. ‘He is married to Kitty.’

‘Oh.’ Chaloner was none the wiser. ‘Say no more.’

Wiseman scowled. ‘There is no need to be acerbic. O’Brien is an Irish baron who came to London to sell copper from his estates. Even he is astonished by how rich it has made him. His wife Kitty is …’ The surgeon made an expansive gesture with his hand.