‘And you think the same may happen to you, if you start revealing secrets,’ surmised Chaloner. For the first time, he saw a crack in Dillon’s armour: he was afraid of the man he expected to save him. ‘Then why are you talking to me, when you need your master’s help more urgently than ever?’
‘Because I admire Thurloe’s constancy. He deserves answers.’
‘Then give me just one more: who sent you to Ireland?’
Dillon’s smile faded. Again, he glanced at the door, to ensure no one was listening, and lowered his voice. ‘No one. I went of my own volition, taking Fitz-Simons, Fanning and others with me. I do not approve of what is happening there – families deprived of land they won or bought honestly. I believed in the rebellion, but had the sense to abandon it once I saw it had been infiltrated by spies like you.’
Chaloner raised his eyebrows. ‘You confess to treachery? Here, of all places?’
Dillon shrugged. ‘Who heard me? You will say nothing, because your family has been victimised by greedy Royalists, too. Your heart was never in thwarting the Castle Plot – I could see it in your eyes.’
Chaloner sincerely hoped no one else had. ‘You are lucky to be alive. The other rebels were rounded up, and most are either hanged or in prison.’
Dillon laughed as he gestured around him. ‘And my situation is different how, exactly? Will you come to see the fun tomorrow morning? You will not be disappointed.’
Chaloner did not leave Newgate as quickly as he would have liked, because inmates saw his clerical garb and asked for his prayers. He obliged, because he had no choice if he wanted to maintain his disguise, but it was a distasteful deception, and when he was finally out into the fresh air, he thought he might be sick. He ripped off the dark clothes and hurled them at the first beggar he saw, ignoring the man’s startled gratitude in his desperation to be away from the prison and its environs. His legs shook horribly, so he hired a carriage to take him to Tower Street.
The Dolphin was a rambling inn, which tended to be frequented by officials of the Navy Office. Chaloner saw one called Samuel Pepys, whom he had met briefly a few months before. A spark of recognition flashed in the clerk’s eyes, but Chaloner was obviously not considered sufficiently important – or useful – to warrant an exchange of civilities, and was pointedly ignored.
The Dolphin’s landlord remembered Willys and Dillon on the night of Webb’s murder, because Willys had been a belligerent drunk who had broken a window. He also recalled Dillon receiving a note and disappearing for several hours – the incident had stuck in his mind because he had been afraid Willys would wake up and cause chaos when his companion was not there to calm him. Chaloner listened to the innkeeper and his regulars for a long time, learning a great deal not only about the night in question, but their views on the certainty of Dillon’s rescue, Lady Castlemaine’s latest pregnancy, and the Bishop of London’s distress over a lost parrot. More pieces of the mystery slotted together, and he finally began to see the answers to at least some of his questions.
‘There is one other thing,’ said the landlord, catching his arm as he was about to leave. ‘Dillon’s message was delivered by a slovenly, grubby fellow – the kind who always happens to be to hand when someone wants something shady done. Then a second man came, also wanting to speak urgently to Dillon, but Dillon had already left.’
‘What did the second man look like?’
‘Better dressed than the first, but it was busy that night, and my memory is … oh, yes, sir. Another shilling might help me remember. He was big, I know that, and he had thick fair hair. And he was a foreigner, judging by the way he spoke.’
Chaloner left as the sun was setting in a great orange ball, and travelled by water from Botolph’s Wharf to Whitefriars Stairs. At that time of day, when the streets were clogged with the carts of traders, all flooding home from their stalls, shops and markets, it was always quicker to go by boat. The sun danced across the filthy water, turning it to a sheet of shimmering gold, and it was almost peaceful, with commerce stopped and the city’s clamour quietened by approaching night. Gulls glided above his head, and the sky was full of red and purple clouds. He smiled when he disembarked and saw a familiar face in the crowd that was out enjoying the warmth of the evening. It was Temperance’s Maude, a basket of brown onions over her arm.
‘Bristol is coming tonight,’ she explained, accepting Chaloner’s offer to carry it for her.
‘That is a fine brooch you are wearing,’ he said, thinking it sat oddly with her functional workaday clothes. It would look more at home with the brothel-master’s costume she would probably don later.
She fingered it, but without pleasure. ‘Johan Behn gave it to me, but he was only after my body.’
Chaloner raised his eyebrows. ‘Eaffrey and Silence are not enough for him?’
‘Eaffrey! A slip of a girl with no meat on her bones. Johan likes his women with a decent pair of hips, although I think Silence has the edge over me there. She can keep him, though.’
‘I thought you liked him.’
‘I did – when I thought he considered me something special. Then I learned he is carrying on with Silence and several others. Like all men, he is just out for what he can get, and his whispered endearments were a sham. Still, at least our affair was one where he gave me gifts, not the other way around. Silence parted with her husband’s ship as a token of her affection.’ She spat in disgust, narrowly missing the onions.
‘I am surprised he has time for all this courting. He is a busy merchant.’
‘Men can always spare an hour for their pleasure. But I have been thinking about Johan since I was made aware of his loose morals. He says he grieves for Webb, but I know for a fact that he does not. The morning after the murder, I heard him tell an associate that it was good riddance.’
‘Which associate? Temple?’
‘No, a low, villainous fellow with black hair and a strange purple birth-stain on his left arm. I would recognise him if I saw him again.’
‘Fanning,’ said Chaloner immediately. ‘He had black hair and a mark on his hand.’
‘You mean one of the men who was convicted of murdering Webb? How odd! Well, anyway, after this Fanning had left, Johan pulled his pipe from his pocket, and a bundle of letters dropped to the floor. I picked them up for him – I thought they might be love letters, as they were penned in pretty blue ink, and I wanted to catch him out if they were – but they were in a strange language.’
‘German,’ said Chaloner. ‘His native tongue.’
‘Does German use numbers for letters, then?’ asked Maude curiously. ‘I had no idea.’
‘Numbers?’ asked Chaloner sharply. He rummaged in an inner pocket for a cipher code Lord Clarendon had once given him. ‘Do you mean like this?’
She grinned. ‘Exactly like that. German, is it? Well, I never!’
When Chaloner reached home, he half expected Scot to be waiting, but the stairs were deserted. A smattering of crumbs told him someone had lingered there, though, and had fortified himself while he did so. Chaloner bent to inspect the mess. He had eaten enough cookshop wares to know three things. First, these crumbs came from a lamb pie. Secondly, lamb pies always contained a generous helping of peas. And thirdly, both Scot and Leybourn hated peas, so would never have bought one.