The Ashes of London. Andrew Taylor

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      ‘Layne?’ She spoke faster and more loudly now, as though this was a subject she preferred to talk about. ‘Yes – what a terrible thing, sir.’ Her voice acquired a touch of emotion that would not have been out of place in a playhouse. ‘Alas! Poor Layne! There was a man who fully repaid our trust. My husband and I were most distressed by his death.’

      After the coroner’s inquest, Layne would go quietly to his grave. Alderley had offered to pay for the burial, Williamson had told me, and the thing would be done decently.

      ‘I suppose it was for the sake of the few pence in his purse?’ Mistress Alderley leaned forward. ‘Have you news of the murderer? Has someone laid information?’

      ‘I’m sorry, madam. Not that I have heard. The times are so out of joint that nothing is as it should be. But Master Williamson understands your indignation, and he wondered if he might serve you in any way.’

      ‘How very kind of him.’ Her eyes narrowed, for perhaps she knew that no one offered something for nothing. ‘But surely nothing can be done? Unless a witness comes forward, how could we lay the rogue who killed Layne by the heels?’

      ‘You may be right.’

      ‘I wonder if it could have been the lunatic.’ She noticed my puzzled expression. ‘Jem, the man who attacked my stepson. After all, he attempted murder inside this house, so perhaps he had already committed one outside it.’

      ‘It is a most ingenious suggestion, madam.’ It was a convenient explanation too, and one that would resolve the business without troubling the Alderleys too much. ‘Tell me, pray, who is Layne’s next of kin?’

      ‘A brother, I believe. He’s in the West Indies, serving as an able seaman on one of the King’s ships. Why?’

      ‘Are Layne’s belongings still here? His box?’

      ‘Yes. My husband has taken charge of it until the brother comes home.’

      ‘Master Williamson wondered whether I might inspect the contents in case there is something to suggest the identity of the assailant. It’s just possible, you see, that the murder was not something that happened by chance.’

      ‘I believe Master Mundy – our steward, you know – has already gone through the box and made a list of what was in it. Would that do?’

      ‘It would be better if I saw it myself – no doubt Master Mundy was listing the contents rather than considering their possible significance.’

      ‘Neatly said, sir.’ She gave me another of those subtly unsettling smiles. ‘You should be a lawyer. But perhaps you are?’

      In another life, I might have been. I shrugged the flattery aside with a smile, though I was warmed by it, for flattery rarely came my way. ‘What of the other man’s box?’

      ‘Jem’s? I think we have it still. I would have burned it but Master Alderley would have none of it. My husband is a stickler for following the due processes of law. There is a niece or a cousin in Oxford, I believe, and he has instructed Master Mundy to write to her.’

      ‘In that case, perhaps I might see Jem’s box as well.’

      ‘Of course, sir. Master Mundy shall be your guide.’

      She was looking at me as she spoke, and I was looking at her. Suddenly the words dried up. A silence settled between us, as uncomfortable as it was unwanted. I stirred, and the chair beneath me creaked twice. The sound was deafening in the silence.

      Mistress Alderley looked away, in the direction of her maid, who still sat with her head bowed, sewing industriously. ‘Ann? Take Master Marwood to Master Mundy. Tell Master Mundy to give our visitor every assistance in his power.’

      Master Mundy, a grave man aware of his own importance, led me down to the servants’ part of the house. It was strange to think that, two days earlier, this sober and upright gentleman had beaten an old man to death with a cat o’ nine tails.

      ‘Was there not a printer in the City named Marwood in the old days?’ Mundy said as they were descending the stairs. ‘A Republican, I think – a Fifth Monarchist?’

      ‘Perhaps, sir. I cannot say.’

      ‘I believe he was imprisoned when the King came into his own again. No connection of yours, then?’

      ‘No, sir. I come from Chelsea.’

      I had grown used to deflecting such questions, for Marwood was not a common name. I had Mundy’s measure now. He had the manner of a gentleman but now he worked as a rich man’s steward. There were many such in London – men who had lost their estates and who now clung all the more tenaciously to the airs of their former stations.

      I followed the steward to a locked room near the kitchens of Barnabas Place. Here, on slatted shelves, were kept the trunks and boxes of the servants. Mundy indicated two of them on the bottom shelf. They were crudely made from deal boards nailed together, with the corners strengthened with thin strips of metal. Each was about two feet wide, and eighteen inches high and deep.

      He left me to lift them onto the table that stood under the small window at the end of the room.

      ‘I cannot understand why you need to inspect them,’ he said. ‘It is quite unnecessary. I have made full inventories.’

      ‘I must follow my orders, sir. I am commanded to search them, and I must do as I’m bid.’

      A crude letter L had been burned with a poker into the wood beneath the lock of the nearer box. Mundy turned the key in the lock, lifted the lid and stood back.

      I examined what was inside. A servant’s box was his private life enclosed in a small space; everything else – his time, his labour, his clothes, his loyalties – belonged to his master; but the box was his. Apart from a few clothes, Layne had possessed a winter cloak, a pair of gilt buckles, a horn mug, a knife with a blade ground almost entirely away, a pipe, a pouch containing a few shreds of dry tobacco and an astrological almanac, printed octavo.

      I picked it up and glanced at the title page. ‘Was he a Dissenter?’ I asked.

      Mundy drew himself up. ‘Sir, all members of this household attend the Established Church and follow its forms and usages.’

      ‘How long had he worked for Master Alderley?’

      ‘Two or three years. Mistress Alderley hired him when her husband was in France.’

      ‘And you were satisfied with him?’

      ‘By and large, yes. He was clean and sober in his habits. I would not have suffered him to stay if he had been otherwise.’

      ‘Was he liked in the household?’

      ‘I suppose so.’ Mundy shrugged, indicating that such matters were far beneath his exalted sphere. ‘As far as I know.’

      ‘What was he doing abroad on the Tuesday?’

      ‘He went out after dinner. The master sent him to Whitehall with a ring he’d had reset for Sir Denzil Croughton.’

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