‘Good Lord, madam, is that your concern?’
‘All I have is Mr Puddinge’s pension and that old house. Now no one will feel safe under my roof.’
‘Why, our journeymen are not so squeamish as that. Besides, the murders took place at the Pig and Rooster – surely it is that establishment which will bear the brunt of any opprobrium, not your own. In any case, Mrs Puddinge, they’ll lodge where I send ’em, and until you give me cause to do otherwise, I’ll keep sending ’em to you. Do we understand each other?’
‘I didn’t mean nothing by it, Sir Thaddeus,’ she said, bobbing a curtsy. ‘A woman’s got to make a living, ain’t she?’
‘Indubitably,’ the grandmaster agreed.
Mrs Puddinge glanced at Quare and coloured. ‘I hope as there are no hard feelings, Mr Quare. You was a good lodger. I only done my duty, and you can’t blame a body for that, can you?’
‘I would appreciate it if you sent my things on to the guild hall, Mrs Puddinge,’ he replied. ‘Once this matter is cleared up, I believe I will seek other lodgings.’
‘There’s no cause to get huffy,’ she said, flushing more deeply still. ‘Your things will be safe with me. I run an honest house, I do. But, not to put too fine a point on it, if it’s a French spy you are, Mr Quare, why, then by law your things are rightfully mine, as it were me that nicked you. So if you don’t mind, I’ll be holding on to them for now.’
‘I do mind,’ he said.
‘That’s as may be. If, God willing, you’re found innocent, then you can come and fetch everything – after payment of a small storage fee, of course. Good day, sirs.’ With a stiff nod to Quare, and another curtsy to Grandmaster Wolfe, she left the study, escorted out by one of the servants.
‘A formidable woman,’ said the Old Wolf once she had gone. ‘I sometimes think that if we could but ship a hundred like her across the Channel, the war would be won in no time.’
‘Sir Thaddeus—’
‘Have no fear for your possessions, Mr Quare. I have already dispatched agents to bring everything here.’
‘Thank you for that, at least.’
‘I have not done it for your sake, but so that we may examine your things with a fine-toothed comb. Once we are done, if you are judged to be a spy, then what is left – after the Crown has taken its share – will indeed go to Mrs Puddinge. That is the law. Now, sir. Let us return to the matter at hand.’
‘I will not lie about Master Magnus,’ Quare said. ‘He suffered enough calumny while alive. I’ll not add to it now, when he can no longer defend himself.’
‘Noble sentiments, no doubt.’ The Old Wolf leaned back in his chair – it creaked ominously – and regarded him for a moment, placid blue eyes unblinking. Then, seeming to come to a decision, he leaned forward again, to the accompaniment of further creaking, and placed his elbows on the desk, careful to avoid coming anywhere near the watch . ‘You must consider the living, Mr Quare, and leave the dead to bury the dead. That is my advice to you. Now that Master Magnus is gone, I will be taking his place at the head of the Most Secret and Exalted Order. In these perilous times, it no longer makes sense – if it ever did – to divide the reins of guild authority between two men. I have already appointed Master Malrubius to assist me.’
Quare flinched at the name. Master Malrubius modelled himself upon the Old Wolf in his style of dress, his mannerisms, even his very girth; but the man was physically and mentally smaller than his model, and the contrast made him an object of ridicule and contempt among the apprentices and journeymen. But he was also an object of fear, for his dull wits did not preclude the frequent use of his fists, which were not at all dull. They struck with the force of small hammers.
Meanwhile, the Old Wolf had continued to address him. ‘I do not yet know if Master Magnus was a traitor to his guild and his king – and do not imagine, by the way, that your testimony alone will acquit or convict him; you are not as important as all that, Mr Quare. It is the master’s own writings that will testify most strongly to his guilt or innocence, and we have only just begun to sort through them; as you know, he was not what could be called an orderly man, at least not where his papers were concerned. But regardless of whether or not he was a French spy, it is already clear that Master Magnus used the regulators as a kind of private army, keeping secrets from me and from Mr Pitt alike, while pursuing an agenda of his own. You, sir, were a part of that agenda. And for whatever reason, when it came to this particular timepiece, the master chose to involve you, rather than a more experienced regulator. Now, however lax he may have been in the disposition of his books and papers, when it came to matters of horology and spycraft, the master was meticulous, as I think you will agree. Thus I conclude that it was not by chance or circumstance that he dispatched you to procure this timepiece. Nor, though the Massacre of the Cats may have been an accident, as you say, was your presence there accidental.’
This had not occurred to Quare. But he was quick to dismiss it. ‘Master Magnus told me that all the more experienced regulators were on assignment. There was no one else close enough at hand to dispatch to Lord Wichcote’s.’
‘He told me the same, and I trusted him – I had no reason not to. Our rivalry was no secret, of course, yet I had always believed that, beyond these walls, we set our differences aside for the good of king and country. I know I did. But since his death – or, rather, since you came to me with that appalling and quite frankly fantastic tale of sparing Grimalkin’s life out of a finicky sense of honour, a tale I did not believe for one instant – since that bit of uncharacteristic sloppiness on Master Magnus’s part, as if events had taken an unexpected turn and forced him to a clumsy improvisation – I began to suspect that he had not been entirely truthful with me. I made inquiries. And so it proved. There were other regulators available that night, Mr Quare. Indeed, the master could have picked among half a dozen men with more field experience than you. And yet he chose you, a regulator still wet behind the ears, for a mission of, as it appears, extraordinary importance. Why would that be?’
‘I-I don’t know,’ confessed Quare, taken aback by this information. He did not think the Old Wolf was lying to him. With Master Magnus, there had always been gears within gears. Not that his opinion of the man’s loyalty had changed, but in this matter, he realized, he might have been too credulous. Loyalty, after all, did not preclude self-interest; aye, or the settling of old scores. ‘The master intended for you to suspend me from the regulators,’ he admitted. ‘That was why he fabricated that story.’
‘Now we are getting somewhere. You will tell me what truly happened between you and Grimalkin, Mr Quare. But first I will hear the reason that Master Magnus wished you suspended.’
‘I don’t know,’ Quare repeated. ‘He said he had some kind of special assignment in mind for me, one in which I would have more freedom if my connection to the Most Secret and Exalted Order was believed to have been severed, but he never had a chance to tell me what it was.’
‘Perhaps we will find a clue in his papers,’ mused Grandmaster Wolfe. ‘But I think you yourself possess many if not most of the answers I seek, though you may not realize it. Answers having to do with the nature and purpose of this watch, for one, and with Master Magnus’s relationship to Aylesford and Grimalkin, for another. Either you are withholding these answers to protect a perfidious scheme in which you are involved right up to your eyeballs, or, more charitably, out of misguided loyalty to a man undeserving of it, or you have simply failed to grasp the significance of certain details known only to you.’
‘Sir Thaddeus, I swear—’
‘Do not protest your innocence to me, sir. Or your ignorance. Mere words will not convince me of either. It is details I want. And details I shall have. Whether you provide those details willingly or require the persuasion of Master Malrubius is immaterial. Is that clear?’