The Piccadilly Plot (8 page)

‘Do not rail at him, dear,’ said Frances mildly. ‘And thieves
do
operate in broad daylight. Indeed, they probably prefer it, because they will be able to see what they are doing.’

Chaloner wished she were present during all his interviews with the Earl. ‘The only way to catch the culprits – or to deter
them – is to put the house under continuous
surveillance. But I cannot do it, sir, not if I am to look into the threat against Pratt.’

‘True,’ acknowledged the Earl. ‘So Pratt and his assistant Oliver can take responsibility during the day, and I shall hire
Sergeant Wright to do it at night – he has more than enough men to protect Pratt
and
guard my house. That should leave you plenty of time to unmask the assassin – and to lay hold of these wretched burglars
before they steal anything else.’

‘Very well, sir.’ Chaloner turned to leave.

‘Wait,’ said the Earl. He grimaced. ‘Much as it pains me to admit it, Henry is wrong, and you and Brodrick are right – the
Queen would never conspire to kill my architect, not even to repay me for neglecting her these last few months. But that does
not mean Pratt is safe. You
must
learn who sent that letter and prevent something dreadful from unfolding – Pratt dead and the Queen blamed.’

‘I shall do my best, sir.’

Chaloner was preparing to take leave of his employer when Edgeman the secretary arrived to remind the Earl that it was time
to attend a meeting of the Tangier Committee. The Earl indicated Chaloner was to help him up – gout and an expanding girth
meant he was not as agile as he once was – and Frances rose to leave, too, unwilling to linger in her husband’s place of work
when he would not be there.

‘I suppose you had better tell me what you learned in Africa,’ said the Earl, waddling towards the door. ‘I know you wrote
me a report, but I could not be bothered to read it.’

‘I did, and it was very interesting,’ said Frances, making
Chaloner warm to her even more. ‘Your assertion that Tangier is a hard posting, miles from the centre of power at White Hall,
does explain why honest men refuse to accept jobs there. Only the dross, who cannot get anything else, are—’

‘A hard posting?’ interrupted the Earl uneasily. He turned to Chaloner. ‘Do you think the Portuguese cheated us when they
gave it as part of the Queen’s dowry, then?’

As the man largely responsible for negotiating the royal marriage contract, he was the one who would be blamed if that transpired
to be true. And Chaloner thought it was – he strongly suspected the Portuguese had been rather glad to be rid of it.

‘The harbour is not all that was promised,’ he hedged. ‘It is too shallow for warships, and is open to northerly gales. But
the garrison is building a mole to protect it, which should help.’

‘A mole is a sea wall,’ interposed Frances, eager to show off the knowledge she had gleaned from reading Chaloner’s commentary.
‘And when it is finished, it will provide British ships with a safe haven in the Mediterranean. This will re-establish us
as the greatest maritime nation in the world, by letting us control the Straits of Gibraltar.’

‘The problem is that only a fraction of the money we send is spent on the mole,’ explained Chaloner. ‘Most is siphoned off
by corrupt officials. The new governor, Sir Tobias Bridge—’

‘A damned Parliamentarian,’ grated the Earl. ‘I argued against appointing him, but he was the only person willing to do it.’

‘What happened to his predecessor?’ asked Frances of Chaloner. ‘Lord Teviot? We heard rumours about his death of course, but
I felt we never had the truth of it.’

‘He took five hundred soldiers to chop down a wood,’ Chaloner replied, thinking that she was right to be suspicious: there
had definitely been something odd about what had happened that fateful day in May. ‘His scouts told him it was safe, but in
fact a large enemy force was waiting. Teviot repelled the first wave, but then he made a fatal mistake.’

‘He skulked back to the town?’ asked the Earl, his interest caught. ‘Instead of pursuing them, and showing the devils what
British infantry can do?’

‘The opposite. He thought he had managed a rout, when it should have been obvious that he was being lured into a trap. All
but thirty of his men were killed.’

‘And Teviot died too,’ sighed the Earl. ‘I did not like him personally – he was arrogant, greedy and stupid – but no one can
deny his courage.’

‘The fact that his scouts told him it was safe bothers me,’ said Chaloner, more to himself than his listeners. ‘I raised the
matter with them when we travelled home together on
Eagle
, but they refused to discuss it.’

‘Then perhaps you had better look into that affair, too,’ said the Earl. ‘As you point out, good men are not exactly queuing
up to accept duties in Tangier, and if rumours about dangerously incompetent staff start circulating, no one will ever volunteer
again.’

‘You want me to go back?’ asked Chaloner, heart sinking. He had hoped to be home for a while.

‘Not before you have caught my thieves and exposed whoever plans to kill Pratt. But if these scouts are in London, then there
is no need for foreign travel. You can question them here.’

‘But I have questioned them, sir. They were unwilling to talk.’

‘Then try harder. I am sure you have cracked tougher nuts in the past. That gives you three different assignments, which
is a lot, but I am sure you will manage. However, remember that the most important one is catching the villains who keep raiding
my house.’

‘No, most important is the plot involving the Queen and Pratt,’ countered Frances. ‘I do not want our architect murdered by
an assassin. Or the poor Queen held responsible for it.’

‘He will give all three equal attention,’ said the Earl, although the tone of his voice made it clear that there would be
trouble if his own concerns were not given priority. Chaloner bowed again, thinking unhappily that none of the enquiries filled
him with great enthusiasm, and he would be lucky if he solved one of them to the Earl’s satisfaction.

In the corridor outside, the Earl’s retainers were waiting to escort him to his meeting. His seal bearer stood ready to lead
the way, and his secretary and gentlemen ushers had lined up to process behind him. All wore his livery of blue and gold,
and made for an imposing sight.

‘You cannot join us, Chaloner,’ said the Earl, looking pointedly at the spy’s soiled and crumpled clothing. ‘So you may escort
my wife home instead.’

‘Not yet, though,’ said Frances. ‘I should like to see the great lords of the Tangier Committee make their appearance. I adore
a spectacle.’

But she was to be disappointed. Her husband was the only man who stood on ceremony, and the other members arrived in a far
more modest fashion. Most had not even bothered to don wigs, and badly shaven heads were the order of the day.

One person had taken care to look his best, however.
He was Samuel Pepys, an ambitious clerk from the Navy Board. Because Chaloner was standing with Lady Clarendon, Pepys deigned
to acknowledge him, although his eyes widened in shock at the spy’s dishevelled appearance.

‘Tangier’s residents say Teviot was the best of all their governors,’ he was informing the man at his side. ‘But to my mind,
he was a cunning fellow.’

‘He died gallantly, though,’ replied his friend. ‘But never mind him. Tell me why you object to paying what Governor Bridge
has demanded for the mole.’

‘Because of the casual way he presents his expenses,’ explained Pepys. ‘We should demand a better reckoning. Lord! How I was
troubled to see accounts of ten thousand pounds passed with so little question the last time the Committee met. I wished a
thousand times that I had not been there.’

‘Perhaps my husband was right to ask you to look into Teviot’s death,’ said Frances, after Pepys and his companion had entered
the building. ‘If such vast sums really are being sent to Tangier with so little accounting, then it will be easy for the
unscrupulous to line their pockets. And to some villains, five hundred lives is a small price to pay for personal profit.’

‘If so, then I shall do all I can to avenge them,’ promised Chaloner.

‘But not today,’ said Frances kindly. ‘You were only married a month before sailing to Tangier, and you have been desperately
busy since you returned. Spend the rest of the day with Hannah.’

Chaloner woke before it was light the next morning, aware that he had a great deal to do. He lay still for a
moment, working out a plan of action, and decided that he would begin by hunting down Harley, Newell and Reyner, on the grounds
that the deaths of so many soldiers was a rather more serious matter than missing planks and the lunatic letter about Pratt.

He was not sure what time Hannah had returned from her duties with the Queen the previous night, but she did not stir as he
slipped out of bed and dressed in the dim light of the candle she had forgotten to extinguish before she had retired. He bent
to kiss her as he left, but she chose that moment to fling out an arm, catching him on the shoulder. With a squawk of pain,
her eyes flew open.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, wringing her knuckles and eyeing him accusingly.

She was a small, fair-haired lady with a pert figure and an impish grin. She was not pretty, but she possessed a strength
of character and an independence of thought that he had found attractive. They had married before they really knew each other,
but it had not taken them long to learn that each possessed habits the other did not like. Chaloner disapproved of the company
Hannah kept at Court and was appalled by her surly morning temper; Hannah deplored Chaloner’s inability to express his feelings
and hated the sound of his bass viol.

Music was important to Chaloner. It soothed him when he was agitated, cleared his mind when he was dealing with complex cases,
and there was little that delighted him more than a well-played recital. He could not imagine a world without it, and felt
incomplete when deprived of it for any length of time. Unfortunately, Hannah did not like him playing in the house, and ignoring
her and doing it anyway negated any enjoyment
he might have gained from the exercise. As far as he was concerned, it was a serious impediment to their future happiness
together.

His frustration with the situation had led him to rent a garret in Long Acre the previous week. All spies kept boltholes for
those occasions when returning home was inadvisable, but Chaloner needed one for the sake of his sanity, too. He had taken
his best viol, or viola da gamba, there immediately, along with the clothes Hannah had parcelled up for the rag-pickers –
she also hated the fact that his work meant he was sometimes obliged to dress in something other than courtly finery. His
second-best viol was stored in a cupboard under the stairs, and was only played when she was out.

‘I am just leaving,’ he whispered. ‘Go back to sleep.’

‘Leaving?’ Hannah cast a bleary eye towards the window. ‘In the middle of the night?’

‘It is nearly dawn.’

‘Exactly! Dawn is the middle of the night. Come back to bed, or you will wake the servants.’

The servants were yet another bone of contention. Chaloner accepted that his post as gentleman usher and Hannah’s as lady-in-waiting
demanded that they keep one, but he had returned from Tangier to find she had hired three. None were women he would have chosen,
because they were brazenly curious about their employers, and watched them constantly. Even if he had not been a spy, obliged
to keep a certain number of secrets, being under constant surveillance in his own home would have been an unwelcome development.

‘I will not wake them,’ he said, wishing he had abstained from reckless displays of affection and that she was still asleep.
‘But you might, if you continue to bawl.’

‘Do not tell me when I can and cannot speak,’ snapped Hannah, displaying the sour temper that invariably afflicted her when
she first awoke. It was so unlike her personality during the rest of the day that he wondered whether he should take her to
a physician. ‘I shall shout if I want to.’

He sat on the side of the bed and took her hand in his, speaking softly in the hope that it would soothe her back to sleep.
‘I am sorry I disturbed you.’

‘You are improperly dressed again,’ said Hannah, wrenching her hand free and struggling into a sitting position. ‘That old
long-coat is not fit for a beggar, while your shirt does not have enough lace. People will think I married a ruffian if you
go to White Hall looking like that.’

‘You did marry a ruffian. The Earl said so only yesterday.’

That coaxed a reluctant smile. ‘Then I retract my words, because I refuse to agree with anything that pompous old relic says.’

Although the Earl was fond of Hannah, the affection was not reciprocated, partly because he disapproved of most of her friends,
and partly because she disliked the fact that he kept sending her husband into dangerous situations. She also objected to
the fact that Chaloner spent more time away from London than in it – since being employed by the Earl, he had been sent to
Ireland, Spain and Portugal, Oxford, Wimbledon, Holland and most recently Tangier.

‘Did you catch whoever is stealing his bricks?’ she asked, grinning suddenly. ‘Everyone at Court is laughing about it, and
I cannot help but wonder whether they are being removed as a prank.’

‘It is possible. Do you have any idea who the culprit might be?’

‘Of course! Do you have three hours to spare while I write you a list? His overbearing manners and priggishness have alienated
virtually everyone at White Hall, and his only cronies are bigoted old churchmen who share his prudish views.’

Chaloner nodded unhappily, perfectly aware that the Earl would have been more popular had he been of a more tolerant disposition.

‘Wait,’ instructed Hannah, as he stood to leave. ‘I have hired another servant, and you should speak to him before you go
out.’

Chaloner was horrified. ‘Another? But we already have two maids and a housekeeper.’