The Last Queen of England (39 page)

“At least my glasses didn’t break,” she said.
 
Then she tugged Tayte’s sleeve, drawing attention to it.
 
“You ripped your jacket.”

Tayte looked.
 
It was torn at the shoulder where he’d made first contact with the Tarmac.
 
He snorted.
 
“Don’t worry,” he said.
 
“I’ve given up all hope of taking any of my suits home with me.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

T
hey got off the bus at The Strand and made their way along Bedford Street towards Covent Garden, entering the grounds of St Paul’s Church via Inigo Place, which, Jean informed Tayte, was named after
Inigo
Jones,
 
the architect who designed the building and the Covent Garden Piazza.
 
Tayte scanned the area for headstones but all he saw was a colourful courtyard rose-garden with grey wooden benches lining the walkway.
 
It was busier than he’d expected, but this peaceful setting amidst Victorian townhouses, coupled with the warm sunshine and the fact that it was lunchtime, made the reason entirely evident.
 
Almost everyone he could see was eating, which did nothing to stay his own appetite.

“This doesn’t look promising either,” Tayte said as they walked.
 
He couldn’t see a single memorial, upright or vertical.
 
“We’ll go straight in this time,” he added.
 
“Keep your fingers crossed.”

As they drew closer, Tayte heard a familiar sound that made him think of Marcus.
 
It was a street performer talking and laughing into a PA system in the piazza on the other side of the church.
 
It reminded him how close they were to the restaurant where his friend had been murdered.
 
He tried to put those thoughts aside for now as they took the few steps up to the main entrance, passing a billboard advertising a play called
Dido and Aeneas
.

“It’s a theatre, too?” Tayte said.

Jean nodded.
 
“I read on the BlackBerry that it’s called the Actors’ Church.
 
Apparently it’s a longstanding tradition.”

They went inside.

“It’s dark,” Jean said.

Tayte peered in, letting his eyes adjust after the bright sunlight.
 
The interior was small and nothing like the church at Hammersmith.
 
“Busy, too,” he said.
 
“Looks like they’re getting ready for a service.”
 
He didn’t know whether to pass through the inner doors or not.
 

“Can I help you?”

Tayte spun around to see a bright faced woman in navy-blue, whom he put somewhere in her fifties.
 
She was carrying an armful of pamphlets.

Jean didn’t say anything.
 
She just returned the woman’s smile, leaving the talking to Tayte this time.

“Hi,” he said.
 
“Is this a bad time for a visit?”

“Not if you want to celebrate the Eucharist with us.
 
Holy Communion begins in fifteen minutes.”
 
She offered them both a pamphlet.
 
“Would you like a service-sheet?”

“No thanks,” Tayte said.
 
“We don’t really have the time.
 
“I’m just a genealogist looking for a record.
 
Do you keep any information at the church apart from these plaques on the walls?”

“Most of them commemorate the achievements of the various actors who’ve passed through here at one time or another,” the woman said.
 
“WS Gilbert of the Gilbert and Sullivan duo was baptised here.”
 
She paused.
 
“But I don’t suppose you’re interested in any of that.”

On any other day Tayte would have been very interested.
 
Gilbert and Sullivan had composed the music for most of his favourite musicals.

“Not today,” he said.
 
“Just parish registers.”

“I’m afraid we don’t keep them here any more.”

Tayte half expected as much.

“But we do have a series of books published by the Harleian Society that might be of interest to you.”

Tayte flashed his eyes at Jean.
 
Long before the world went digital the Harleian Society had been transcribing collections of information that were of particular value to genealogists and heraldists.

“Do you have their Parish Register series?” Tayte asked.

“I’m sure we do.
 
I think one of the previous rectors made a hobby of collecting them.
 
The books were here long before me and I’ve been a churchwarden at St Paul’s for twelve years now.”

“We’re only interested in 1697 to 1700,” Tayte said.
 
“Do you think we could take a look?”

The woman wrinkled her nose.
 
“If you’re quick,” she said.
 
“Follow me.”

She led Tayte and Jean around the congregation into a windowless room that looked like it was used for church administration.
 
There was a desk with a computer screen and keyboard.
 
Papers and books were everywhere.

“They’re in here,” The woman said, going to a cabinet on the far side of the room.
 
She pulled out a drawer and began to sift through the contents.

“Here we are,” she said.
 
“The Registers of St Paul’s Church Covent Garden Vol. IV - 1653-1752.”
 
She turned to face them again.
 
“How does that sound?”

Tayte was smiling.
 
“That sounds perfect.”

The woman put the book on the desk and Tayte eagerly flicked through the pages while Jean looked over his shoulder.
 
When he found the end of the seventeenth century, he fished in his jacket pocket for the slip of paper containing the dates they were interested in.

“March 25th, 1697,” he said, still turning pages.
 
A moment later he stopped, looked at Jean and shook his head.
 
“There’s just one burial recorded.
 
It’s nearly three weeks out.”
 
He checked the next date, which was for 1698.
 
“December 15th,” he said.
 
There were two registered burials and one birth that month: two burials in the first week and one birth on the 28th.
 
He flicked ahead to 1700.
 
“One to go,” he said.
 
“January 25th.”

A moment later he looked up again.

“No good?” the churchwarden said.

Tayte shook his head and noted from Jean’s expression that she shared his disappointment.
 
“One birth and one death,” he said.
 
“Both on the same day and three weeks too late.”

“The same day?” the warden said.
 
She found the entry.
 
“Oh, yes, the Booth family,” she added, shaking her head.
 
“Tragic.
 
The mother died giving birth.
 
Then eight years later the daughter drowned in the Thames.
 
Her poor father could never forgive himself for her death, or so the story goes.”

“That’s very interesting,” Tayte said, keen to move on.

“They have an inscription in the churchyard,” the warden continued.
 
“There are several others there and copies of registers are prone to error, aren’t they?
 
It might be worth a look.”

“Very much so,” Tayte said.
 
“But I didn’t see any memorial inscriptions on the way through.”

“They’re around the corner to your right as you leave.
 
We have a row of headstones against the wall and some inscriptions on the ground.”

“Then we’ll leave you to your communion,” Tayte said.
 
“I’m sure we’ve already taken up too much of your time.”

On the way out, Tayte began to question his logic.
 
He gazed absently at the myriad plaques on the walls as they walked, reading abstract words here and there, taking little in.

“What else could it be?” he said, urging himself to think.

“Something to do with the Ouroboros?” Jean said.

Tayte shook his head.
 
“Too vague.
 
Having to find any kind of mark is leaving too much to chance.
 
The ahnentafel’s like a treasure map and those things are never vague.
 
Its creator couldn’t risk any kind of misinterpretation.”

“I suppose not,” Jean said.
 
“A memorial carrying a date that matches one of Queen Anne’s failed pregnancies on the other hand is very specific.”

“Yes, it is.”

“So let’s stick with it,” Jean said.
 
“We still have the church at Shadwell to try when we’ve finished here.”
 
She scoffed.
 
“We should have started our search there.
 
East to west.
 
You know things are always in the last place you look.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Tayte said as they approached the light beyond the main doors and behind them the Eucharist began.

Tayte fell behind and caught up with Jean at the bottom of the steps outside the church.

“What kept you?”

He dropped to his knees and opened his briefcase.
 
He took out the genealogy charts Marcus Brown had compiled for Julian Davenport and Douglas Jones and spread them out on the flagstones.

“What is it?” Jean said.
 
“Have you found something?”

Tayte didn’t answer right away.
 
He traced a finger over the names on Jones’s chart and then did the same with Davenport’s.
 
He paused over them for several seconds then he shook his head and folded them away again.

“It’s nothing,” he said, slipping the charts back into his briefcase.
 
“I was just wondering whether any of those other dates in the burial register appeared anywhere else here.
 
They don’t.”
 
He stood up.
 
“Let’s take a look at those headstones.”

They kept to their right and walked around the church as directed.
 
The area was bleak and colourless by comparison to the gardens they had just left.
 
The ground was covered with grey paving slabs and there was a narrow, flowerless shrub border to one side.
 
Everything was overshadowed by the trees that grew out of the paving, blocking the sunlight.
 
The headstones the churchwarden had mentioned were lined up against the church wall to their right, like a row of knockdown targets at a fair.

They walked over several horizontal memorials to get there.
 
Those that were legible bore dates from the late eighteenth century and he saw one that was barely discernible, the inscription all but gone.
 
He wondered whether it had been missed from the Harleian Society’s publication because of its condition when the register was compiled.
 
What if it was the very grave they hoped to find - the heir’s identity now lost for all time?
 
He wondered how that would sit with the British Security Service and whoever had offered the exchange for Jean’s son.

They approached the headstones and walked the line from one to the next as though inspecting a parade, becoming increasingly disheartened with every inscription they read.
 
The dates were mostly from the early to mid 1700s.
 
They were old but offered no connection.
 
Heading back to the gardens, something caught Jean’s eye and she went to the wall in shadow.

“Look,” she said, pointing to an inscription set into the corner by her feet.
 
“It’s for the Booth family the churchwarden told us about.
 
The drowned girl.”

Tayte knelt beside it.
 
It bore three dates.
 
One was for a loving husband on the 4th of June, 1739.
 
Another was for his beloved wife on the 14th of February 1700, and the third was for their daughter, who was born on the same day and died eight years later in 1708 as the churchwarden had said.

“She drowned the same year our Royal Society Fellows were hanged,” Tayte said.

“Pity she was born three weeks too late,” Jean countered.

Central to the inscription was a sentence that made it clear how the churchwarden knew that the father could never forgive himself for his daughter’s death.

“I let her die,” Tayte said as he read it.

Jean knelt down and ran her fingers over the stone.
 
“That’s very sad.”

Tayte turned away.
 
“I’ve read a thousand inscriptions just like it.
 
Come on.
 
Nothing here matches what we’re looking for.”