The Piccadilly Plot (13 page)

‘He is right,’ agreed Thompson. ‘Fighting Hollanders would be madness. Besides, they are a Protestant nation that was kind
to the King when he was in exile. What purpose will conflict serve?’

‘They are taking slaves from Africa to work on their sugar plantations,’ argued Farr. ‘When we defeat them,
we
can do it instead, so
we
shall have cheap sugar – as much as we can eat.’

‘Excellent!’ declared Stedman. ‘Coffee is a lot nicer with sugar.’

Chaloner wondered whether that was why he had yet to acquire a taste for coffee: he did not use sugar, as a silent protest
against the plantations. He knew his self-denial
made no difference to the slaves, and it was impossible to avoid sugar in all its forms, but he persisted anyway.

‘The slave trade is a vicious, despicable business, and any good Christian should agree with me,’ declared Thompson, uncharacteristically
vehement. ‘It is evil.’

‘It is a matter of commerce,’ argued Farr. ‘We need affordable sugar, and slaves are the best way to get it. Morality has
nothing to do with—’

‘Of course it does!’ cried Thompson. ‘How can you condone snatching men, women and children from their homes, and forcing
them to work for no pay, just so you can have sweet coffee?’

‘If I were an African, I would accept it as my lot,’ declared Farr. ‘The wealthy and powerful have always dominated the weak.
God made us that way.’

‘He most certainly did not,’ yelled Thompson, outraged. ‘And if you ever say such a wicked thing again, I will … I will …
well, I do not know what I shall do, but you will be sorry.’

Everyone stared at him. Thompson had never lost his temper with Farr before.

‘He is right,’ said Chaloner in the silence that followed. He rarely joined coffee-house debates, because he disliked the
attention it earned him. However, this was a matter about which he felt strongly. ‘The slave trade is an abhorrent business.’

‘How do you know?’ pounced Stedman. ‘You appeared last week all brown and healthy after months of absence – which you still
have not explained. You were clearly in warmer climes, so where did you go? Barbados? Jamaica? Is that why you hold forth
about the slave trade?’

Chaloner was aware that everyone was regarding him with interest, and wished he had held his tongue.
‘Tangier,’ he replied, supposing there was no harm in telling them. His mission had not been secret, and an evasive answer
might be more trouble than it was worth.

‘How unpleasant,’ shuddered Farr. ‘I understand it is a vile place, full of snakes and swamps.’

‘No, that is New England,’ countered Stedman. ‘Tangier is in the middle of a desert. The Portuguese were delighted to foist
it on us, because it is hot and nasty. Is that not right, Chaloner?’

‘It is certainly hot,’ replied Chaloner, wondering how the Rainbow’s patrons came by such wildly inaccurate information. How
could Stedman think Tangier was in the
middle
of a desert when it was being fortified a sea port?

‘I have been told it will be a useful slaving centre one day,’ said Farr. ‘But Thompson is glaring, so we had better discuss
something else. How about this Collection of Curiosities near St Paul’s, which is the talk of the city? Has anyone been to
see it? Apparently, it has an “Ant Beare” from Brazil on display. Where is Brazil, exactly? Is it anywhere near China?’

While Stedman obliged him with a lesson in geography, Thompson gave Chaloner a strained smile. ‘I am glad
one
of my acquaintances has proper views on the slave trade. I preached against it in my sermon on Sunday, but I do not think
anyone listened. I have a bad feeling that we will follow the Portuguese into the business, simply because there is money
to be made.’

‘Portugal is not a major factor in the trade any longer. Holland has supremacy now.’

‘But the Portuguese
do
continue to take slaves to Brazil,’ countered Thompson. ‘You should not ignore their role in this evil simply because the
Dutch have surpassed them in wickedness. More to the point, did you know
that the Adventurers transported more than three thousand people to Caribbean plantations last year? It is disgraceful, barbaric
and … and
wicked
! And it is not as if the Adventurers need more money. They are all fabulously rich already.’

‘Wealth seems to be one of those commodities that no one ever admits to having enough of,’ said Chaloner. ‘The more someone
has, the more he itches to acquire.’

‘Yes,’ said Thompson caustically. ‘In my line of work, we call it greed.’

Night had fallen by the time Chaloner left the coffee house, a set of carefully forged documents in his pocket for Reyner
– he had borrowed pen and paper from Farr, although it had not been easy to dissuade the other patrons from trying to see
what he was doing. Many other pedestrians had hired linkmen – carriers of pitch torches – to light their way, especially north
of Charing Cross, where fewer houses meant it was much darker. Chaloner did not bother, although it meant he was in danger
of stumbling in potholes or treading in something unpleasant. There was another peril, too: two louts approached him with
the clear intent of demanding his purse, but they backed away when his hand dropped to the hilt of his sword and they saw
he was able to defend himself.

He reached the Crown and spent a few moments studying it from the shadows cast by the Gaming House opposite. Lights blazed
on the ground floor, and a lamp was lit in the attic, but the rooms in between were in darkness. He crossed the road and entered
the tavern. It was full and very noisy; Landlord Marshall moved between the tables with a genial smile and amiable conversation.

Still happy to gossip, Marshall informed Chaloner that the Piccadilly Company had permanent hire of the first floor, while
the two storeys above it were rented by tenants, namely Pratt and a woman for whom he seemed to hold a fatherly regard. Chaloner
sat for a while, watching and listening, and when he was sure no one was looking, he slipped up the stairs.

The Piccadilly Company’s chambers were locked, but it did not take him long to pick the mechanism and let himself inside.
He lit a candle from the embers of the fire, shielding it with his hand so it would not be seen from outside.

The first room was an elegantly appointed parlour, with wood-panelled walls and a finely plastered ceiling. Its only furniture
comprised a large table of polished oak, with benches set around it. He examined them minutely, then did the same for the
panelling, floorboards and chimney, but if there were secret hiding places for documents, then he could not find them. The
only evidence that papers had been present was in the hearth, where some had been reduced to ashes.

The second room was a pantry, indicating that refreshments were sometimes served, but a search of it yielded nothing. He returned
to the parlour and sat on one of the benches, wondering what it was that Fitzgerald the pirate, the Dutch Janszoons, the nice
Mr Jones, the Portuguese man, the three scouts and their cronies discussed. It was clearly something they wanted kept secret,
or they would not have hired Brinkes to stand guard downstairs.

Could they be plotting rebellion? There had been dozens of uprisings since the King had reclaimed his crown – by Parliamentarians
unwilling to accept that the
Republican experiment was over, and by fanatics who believed the throne should have been offered to Jesus instead. They occurred
so frequently that the newsbooks no longer bothered to report them, and the only person remotely interested was Spymaster
Williamson, whose duty it was to suppress them.

But Chaloner did not think Harley and his fellow scouts were the kind of men who would care about politics – they were too
selfish to risk themselves for a principle. However, Fitzgerald had lost his fortune in a storm, and Landlord Marshall believed
he intended to make himself wealthy again. Somehow, money seemed a far more likely explanation than insurrection. But what
were they planning, exactly? And how did the Tangier massacre fit into it?

As sitting in the parlour was not providing answers, Chaloner stood to leave. He glanced at the ashes in the hearth and, out
of desperation, poked among them until he recovered a fragment that had escaped the flames. He tweaked it out, but it had
been written in cipher:

He shoved it in his pocket, thinking it told him one thing for certain: that if the Piccadilly Company was sending or receiving
coded messages and then burning
them, it
was
embroiled in something untoward. It was not something that honest people tended to do.

He relocked the door and was about to walk down the stairs when he heard someone coming up them. The person was carrying a
lamp, and it cast a shadow on the wall. Chaloner froze in alarm when he recognised the unmistakable bulk of Brinkes – he was
about to be caught prying by a man who made his living by violence and murder.

Chaloner was reluctant to fight Brinkes, because he did not want the Piccadilly Company to know it was being monitored. Unfortunately,
there was no time to pick the lock on the door again, so he ran silently up the stairs to the next floor. Not surprisingly,
Pratt’s rooms were locked, and as he bent to try the handle, his sword scraped against the wall. It was a careless mistake,
and he heard Brinkes falter on the floor below. There was a brief pause and then footsteps as the man came to investigate.

With no other option, Chaloner continued upwards to the attic. Luckily, that door was open, so he stepped through it quickly.

The woman sitting in the window spun around in alarm. She was pretty, with brown hair and clear skin, and she recognised him
as the man who had seen her watching the street because she smiled. He interpreted it as a sign that she would be willing
to help him, so he put his finger to his lips, and had only just managed to duck behind the bed before the door flew open.

Brinkes stood there, one meaty hand clutching a lamp and the other holding a dagger. When he began to stride
towards the woman with barefaced menace, Chaloner swore softly, seeing he would have to do battle after all. He started to
stand, but sank down again when she began to speak.

‘Do you have a dog?’ she asked in a curiously childish voice. She beamed at Brinkes, an expression that bespoke vacuity, and
Chaloner realised with a start that there was something amiss with her wits. ‘James has a dog. A black one. Have you seen
it? It is missing.’

‘Your husband is dead,’ said Brinkes, stopping in his tracks to regard her warily. ‘And so is his dog. Do you not remember
being told? But never mind that. Did anyone just come in here?’

‘I like visitors,’ declared the woman, rocking back and forth. ‘But I do not have many.’

‘Christ,’ muttered Brinkes. Like many folk, he was unsure how to deal with disturbed minds. Unsettled, he began to back away.
‘Lock the door when I have gone. There are a lot of unpleasant people in this part of the city, and you do not want them coming
in.’

The door closed, but Chaloner waited until Brinkes’s footsteps had gone all the way to the ground floor before moving. He
stood and smiled gratefully at the woman.

‘I like visitors,’ she announced brightly. ‘My name is Ruth Elliot, and my husband is called James. He has a dog, and it is
missing. Have you seen it?’

Chaloner frowned. James Elliot was the name of the man who had fought and killed Cave. ‘When did your husband die, mistress?
Yesterday?’

‘He has not been to see me all day, and my brother told me he was dead.’ Then her troubled expression lifted, and she laughed.
‘But it cannot be true, because he was alive on Sunday.’

A miniature line-engraving had pride of place on the table, so Chaloner picked it up. The likeness had been made when Elliot
was younger, but the eyes and black wig were the same. Also, Lester had mentioned a Ruth who would be heartbroken if Elliot
were harmed, although Chaloner doubted it was the shock of her spouse’s death that had turned her wits: the array of medicines
on the cabinet, and the dolls lined up on the bed, suggested they had been awry for some time.

He regarded her thoughtfully. It was a curious coincidence that Elliot’s wife just happened to live in the place that was
the object of one of his three investigations. Or was it? There was a connection of sorts, in that Elliot had killed Cave,
a man who had travelled home from Tangier on the same ship as the three scouts. And Harley, Newell and Reyner were involved
with the Piccadilly Company, which met downstairs.

‘You watch the people who use the rooms below you,’ he said, coming to kneel next to her and trying to gauge her level of
intelligence. ‘What do you see?’