‘Your indignation is hardly warranted,’ said Chaloner, amused. ‘You are a self-professed killer who has disguised himself to spy on three men who have been murdered — four, if we count Jones. But what is your alibi?’
‘I was with Williamson when Chetwynd, Vine and Langston died. Ask him, if you do not believe me. But I have answered enough of your questions. Let me go.’
‘No,’ said Chaloner, feeling an alibi from the Spymaster was less than worthless, as far as he was concerned. ‘You are coming to White Hall with me. Your master thinks I killed you and dropped you in the river, and I would rather he did not hold me responsible for the death of one of his creatures.’
‘I am afraid that is out of the question. You see, I had the misfortune to witness Lady Castlemaine commit an indiscretion with a certain gentleman, and she offered to cut out my tongue if I show my face there again. She will forget me eventually, but I intend to keep a low profile until she does. The rumours about my death suit me very nicely.’
‘They will not be rumours if you refuse to come with me.’
‘You cannot march all the way to White Hall holding me like this, and I will not go willingly. You will have to find another way to convince Williamson that you have not murdered his best man.’
‘Then tell me your password — all intelligencers have a code that only they and their Spymaster know.’
‘That is a clever idea! Unfortunately, we do not. Take my brooch instead — he will recognise it as mine.’
Chaloner laughed softly. ‘And then he will arrest me for stealing it from your corpse! Keep it. It will be more trouble than it is worth — and so are you.’
He released his captive suddenly, shoving him so hard that Swaddell stumbled into a pile of rubbish. The moment he regained his balance, the assassin whipped out his dagger, an expression of deadly purpose on his face. But Chaloner had already melted into the shadows, and was nowhere to be seen.
Symons had not travelled far while Chaloner had been interrogating Swaddell. He had wasted time trying to flag down a hackney, but it was raining, and other people had the same idea, so carriage after carriage had rolled past with shakes of the head from the driver. After a lot of futile waving, Symons accepted it would be quicker to walk, and began to plod along with his head down and his shoulders slumped. Eventually, he reached Axe Yard, a small cul-de-sac off King Street, which boasted twenty-eight houses of varying levels of grandeur. He headed towards one of the smaller homes, which was neat and clean, but in obvious need of fresh paint and new window shutters. It was exactly what Chaloner would have expected from a respectable clerk who had lost all at the Restoration.
A lamp hung above the door, and its unsteady light showed Symons’s clothes were greasy and unwashed, while his carrot-coloured hair had not seen a brush in days. Moreover, he had been crying — his eyes were red-rimmed and his cheeks were puffy. Chaloner frowned as he approached. What was wrong with him?
‘I have no money,’ blurted Symons, assuming the sudden appearance of a stranger in the dark meant only one thing. ‘Take my purse, if you will, but it is empty.’
‘I am not here for your money.’
Symons peered at him. ‘I know you! Greene spoke to you at the Tennis Court today. Surely he has not sent you to call me to yet another prayer meeting? We have only just finished the last one.’
Chaloner was not sure what to make of this assumption, but was prepared to take advantage of it. ‘Does he often send you summonses, then?’
A flicker of suspicion crossed Symons’s face, but quickly faded, leaving Chaloner with the impression that he did not really care why anyone should be asking him such questions. He wondered again what ailed the man.
‘Yes, he does,’ replied Symons. ‘The others, being employed by the Royalist government, have the luxury of telling each other when to meet. I, being ousted, must wait for messengers.’
‘You go to these meetings to pray?’
‘I go to pray. The others are obsessed by these murders at the moment, although I suppose that is understandable — the victims were our friends.’
‘I find it strange that you — a dismissed clerk from the Commonwealth — should count Royalist officials among your acquaintances.’
Symons shrugged. ‘I do not begrudge them their success. They are all good men, unlike the Lea brothers whose prosperity derives from corruption. Well, I assume they are all good men. Before he died, my uncle Scobel said he suspected Chetwynd was a rogue, but I did not believe him. However, Greene told me today that he was right.’
‘I met your uncle once,’ lied Chaloner. He tried to recall what Thurloe had written in his letters. He did not think remarking that the man’s bald pate and beard made him look as if his head was on upside down would endear him to his nephew, so he thrashed around for something else. ‘At a firework display he funded, in the grounds of St Catherine’s Hospital.’
Symons leaned against the door, oblivious to the rain that dripped from the eaves, and smiled for the first time. ‘He often did things like that, to cheer folks’ lives. He was a wonderful man.’
‘How did he die?’
‘A sharpness of the blood. People say I benefited from his death, because I was his heir. But first, I did not inherit much of his estate — the bulk went to pay debts. And second, I miss him horribly and wish he was still alive.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Chaloner, hearing the genuine grief in his voice. ‘It is never easy to lose kin.’
Symons regarded him curiously. ‘You speak from personal experience?’
Chaloner did not reply. There were some depths to which he would never plunge, and using dead loved ones to elicit information was one of them.
‘Everything went wrong three years ago, and it has stayed that way,’ Symons said bitterly when there was no response. ‘After the Restoration, I lost my job, my uncle died, my wife became ill, and now the prayer meetings — once such a source of strength for me — have turned into occasions for trite social chatter. Some of our number even go as far as to say the gatherings have become a chore, and they want to withdraw. Of course, they never will.’
Chaloner raised his eyebrows. ‘Why not? Is attendance obligatory, then?’
‘No, but most of them are afraid that their luck will change if they resign. After all, look what happened to Langston when he left us last summer. Do you know Langston? He is the plump man with the long nose — the third of the poisoner’s victims. He pretended to be virtuous, but he was not. He wrote plays.’
Chaloner was bemused by the disjointed chain of confidences. ‘Do you object to the stage, then?’
Symons shook his head. ‘But I object to the kind of filth Langston penned. His dramas were obscene, all about unnatural forms of love and … things I cannot bring myself to mention. They could never be performed in public, but he wrote them for the Court, which has an appetite for lewdness — especially Lady Castlemaine, who is said to have paid him a fortune for them.’
‘How do you know what he wrote?’
‘Because he accidentally left a manuscript behind once, after one of my uncle’s meetings. We were deeply shocked. Langston came to retrieve it, but not before we had seen what sort of mind he had.’
‘Did he know you read it?’
‘No! I put on an innocent face, and my uncle pretended to be asleep, so he would not have to speak to him. And they never met again anyway, because my uncle died a few days later.’ Symons saw Chaloner was sceptical. ‘If you do not believe me, then ask the Lea brothers — they made copies for Langston’s actors. And ask Hargrave, too, because his apprentices built the sets at White Hall.’
Chaloner thought about what Swaddell had said — that the Leas and Hargrave had exchanged meaningful glances whenever Langston was mentioned, and that they, unlike everyone else, declined to proclaim his virtue. So, the assassin had been telling the truth about that, at least. ‘You said something happened to Langston last summer,’ he prompted.