He crossed the bridge and headed for the prison, noting how it stood in the shadow of mighty St Paul’s – the racket from the shops and stalls in the cathedral’s churchyard could be heard even above the rumble of iron cartwheels on the cobbles of Ludgate Hill. He loitered in the porch of little St Martin’s, opposite the gatehouse, until he spotted the warden who had taken him to see Sarsfeild. He left his hiding place and handed the man a shilling.
‘Sarsfeild,’ mused the warden, pocketing the coin. ‘Due to be executed tomorrow, but he beat us to it. The governor is furious, because it means we lost two of the three men due to die on Saturday. Sarsfeild was found dead in his cell – hanged with the laces from his own shirt. He done it himself.’
‘I was under the impression he wanted to live,’ said Chaloner. ‘He hoped someone would save him, because he said he was innocent.’
‘They are all innocent in there,’ said the warden wearily, jerking his thumb towards the prison walls. ‘But perhaps his priest convinced him that the time for lies was over. Vicars often have that effect on condemned men: they talk about Jesus and wicked hearts break. I seen it dozens of times.’
‘What vicar?’ asked Chaloner.
‘The Rector of St Dunstan-in-the-West.’ The warden screwed up his face as he fought to remember a name. ‘Willys – George Willys.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Like a priest – shabby black coat, broad-brimmed hat, shoes with holes. He wore a sword, I remember, which is unusual for a religious cove. It was hid under his cloak but I saw the tip.’
‘Was Sarsfeild alive after this vicar had left?’
‘I expect so, or he would have said something. Priests do not like it when prisoners die in the middle of evangelical sessions. It makes them feel they have wasted their time, because dead men cannot ponder redemption and that kind of thing.’
In other words, he did not know, surmised Chaloner. ‘What time did this visit take place?’
The warden scratched his oily pate. ‘Now you are asking. It was after three o’clock, because that was when we finished giving all the inmates their dinner.’
‘George Willys was dead himself by then. The man you admitted was an impostor.’
‘Well, he looked like a vicar,’ said the warden defensively. ‘He had a Bible and everything. I thought it was odd that the Rector of St Dunstan’s should come, when Sarsfeild hailed from the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, but it is not for me to question clerics.’
‘What happened to Sarsfeild’s body?’
‘The barber-surgeons had it. They needed one urgent, and they were lucky we had one going spare. It is not every day we have suicides. We are not Newgate.’
‘Why did they need it urgently?’
‘Apparently, a rich patron paid Mr Johnson a lot of money for a Private Anatomy, but Mr Johnson did not have a corpse, so he used one that had been set aside for another surgeon called Wiseman. Wiseman was furious, and told Mr Johnson that if he did not procure a body immediately, he would end up on the cutting table himself. So we let Mr Johnson have Sarsfeild.’
Thoughts teeming, Chaloner was about to visit Newgate, to see whether he could shake any more details from the aggravating Dillon – there was nothing like looming execution to concentrate the mind – when he met Holles. The colonel was striding purposefully along the spacious avenue called Old Bailey, and Chaloner greeted him warily, uncertain of the man and the status of their alliance.
‘May is still telling everyone that you started that fight in the Spares Gallery yesterday,’ said Holles without preamble.
‘Do you believe him?’ asked Chaloner.
Holles grimaced. ‘It is getting harder to tell friend from foe these days, and you have never liked May, so it is possible that you provoked a struggle. And then there was Wiseman – he took your side, and that is what really turned me against you. You see, not long before your spat with May, Wiseman told me a filthy lie. So, my instinct was to distrust him a second time, too.’
‘What “filthy lie” did he tell you?’
Holles looked pained. ‘I am fond of Maude from Hercules’s Pillars Alley, and Wiseman told me that Johan Behn took her to the New Exchange and bought her a brooch. It cannot be true, because Behn is courting Eaffrey Johnson. So, Wiseman was making up tales, just to upset me.’
‘Why would he do that?’ asked Chaloner, wondering whether Behn had some perverse fascination with portly, middle-aged ladies, given that he seemed to appreciate Silence’s company, too.
‘He probably cannot help it – they are all liars in the medical profession. Johnson spouts untruths each time he opens his mouth – on Monday, he told me he fought with Prince Rupert at the Battle of Naseby, when I know for a fact that he spent his war apprenticed to a barber in Paternoster Row.’
‘What about Lisle? Does he lie, too?’
‘Not as far as I know. He is the only decent one among the lot of them. Incidentally, I examined the horse that killed my man yesterday. When it escaped, all the grooms were being lectured by Brodrick on the correct way to dress a mane, so none of them can be responsible for what I found.’
‘And what was that?’ asked Chaloner, when Holles paused for dramatic effect.
‘Someone had put a nail in its saddle, which cut it and made it buck.’
Chaloner was not particularly surprised. ‘So, that means Willys’s murder was premeditated. Someone deliberately arranged a diversion, so no one would notice when he was stabbed.’
‘A murder was premeditated,’ corrected Holles. ‘You may have been the target, and the wrong man was killed. Or perhaps the killer intended to dispatch both of you, but ran out of time.’
Chaloner would have done virtually anything to avoid setting foot inside Newgate Gaol again. Unfortunately, there was no one to go in his stead. Scot was due to meet Williamson, to discuss his brother’s release, and although he offered to visit Dillon as soon as he had finished, Chaloner felt the matter could not wait. Meanwhile, Thurloe had taken Leybourn off on some errand of his own, and no one at Lincoln’s Inn knew where they had gone.
With a sigh of resignation, the spy turned his attention to the task in hand. He had no forged letter to the governor and no heavy purse, so this time he was obliged to rely on his wits. He purchased an old black coat and a ‘sugar-loaf ’ hat from a rag-picker – men who collected old clothes and sold them to the desperate – and borrowed a Bible from nearby Christchurch.
‘I am the Reverend May,’ he announced to the porter on duty at Newgate’s entrance, trying to quell the uneasy fluttering in his stomach. ‘From St Martin-in-the-Fields.’ He was not about to make the same mistake as the impostor who had killed Sarsfeild, by claiming the wrong parish. ‘I have come to speak privately to Mr Dillon.’
‘What about?’ demanded the guard.
‘His immortal soul,’ replied Chaloner loftily. He clasped his hands together, and raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘For, as it is written in the Holy Bible–’
‘All right,’ interrupted the guard. ‘I see your point. Follow me, but make it quick, because it is not right to waste too much of a man’s last day on religious claptrap, and he is trying to finish a book.’
‘He has accepted the inevitability of his death, then?’ asked Chaloner. ‘His soul will be–’
‘He thinks he is going to be saved,’ corrected the guard. ‘The reason he wants to finish the book is so he can return it to its owner before he heads to Ireland on Sunday. The governor is worried about tomorrow, and extra soldiers have been drafted in, ready to deal with any trouble from the crowd.’