Lumley is alone in his privy chamber when Nicholas is shown in. He sits in a high-backed chair by the fire, his mournful brows knitted in concentration. There’s a slim leather-bound book open on his knees and a pair of spectacles perched on the bridge of his long nose. In his black gown he looks like a Northumbrian abbot in a wintry Lindisfarne cell.
‘Marcus Aurelius, the Meditations,’ he explains. ‘Printed in Heidelberg. Greek into Latin. Not particularly accurately, I fear. I’m gladdened to see you alive, young man.’
‘I was lucky, my lord,’ Nicholas says, suddenly aware of a hoarseness in his voice.
Lumley waves the book at him as though it were evidence in a lawsuit.
‘Aurelius tells us we are foolish to be surprised when bad things happen, or to weep when we suffer loss. He says it is wiser to expect these things and find the bravery to bear them. But as far as I can tell, he says nothing about going in search of them. I assume your presence in the mews at the dead of night was not happenstance, Dr Shelby? Or have you discovered a sudden unaccountable interest in falconry?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘Then what were you about, sirrah? You were somewhat incoherent when we found you.’
‘I was there because of a note, my lord, apparently from Master Deniker. It was pushed under my door during the night.’
‘This?’ Lumley asks, taking a fragment of paper from the folds of the book. ‘We found it in your chamber when we carried you there.’
One glance confirms it. ‘Yes, my lord, this is the note. But the words on it are a lie. That’s not why I was lured to the mews.’
‘And the true reason is?’ asks Lumley, frowning.
‘Because last night someone panicked when I mentioned I’d seen the bodies washed up on Bankside, when I said I knew Elise Cullen’s testimony to be true. That person decided the safety of their secret required my immediate death – however risky that might be.’
‘Do you comprehend what you imply, Dr Shelby?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ says Nicholas firmly. ‘It means someone here is involved in the killings. It must be Francis Deniker, Gabriel Quigley, Lady Elizabeth or you.’
Nicholas can scarcely believe what he’s said. Barely hours ago it would never have occurred to him. Can it possibly be? Is John Lumley – the patron of physic, the man of medicine, the collector of dangerous books – behind the drained and eviscerated carcasses washing up on Bankside? Is this dour, studious man sitting before him responsible for a series of ghastly pseudo-medical experiments carried out on the living? Has John Lumley killed, merely to satisfy his unbounded hunger for new knowledge?
For a long while Lumley says nothing. Then he slips the note back into the Aurelius. ‘I can see now why Robert Cecil chose you, Dr Shelby. You have an inquisitor’s tenacity about you.’
‘I take not the slightest pleasure from it, my lord.’
‘Yet you wish to add murderer to the list of accusations my enemies would hurl in my face.’
‘Not unless I have to, my lord.’
Lumley’s long, grey face colours with anger. ‘Shelby, if I’d wanted you dead, it would have cost me less money than Lady Elizabeth makes me spend on firewood for a single hearth! I could have had you waylaid on the ride back to London. Why in the Lord’s name would I make a confection of notes and assignations at the dead of night?’
‘That’s what I’ve asked myself several times, my lord.’
John Lumley slams his fist down on the Meditations. ‘God’s blood, Shelby! You have brought me pain indeed by coming here.’
Nicholas stands firm. ‘Through no desire of my own, my lord. But I have found myself caught up in a tempest. And no matter how much I might wish it, I cannot stop the wind from howling.’
Lumley closes his eyes and exhales, purging himself of rage. He says, ‘God has not yet made a storm that does not eventually abate, Dr Shelby.’
‘Indeed so, my lord. But how many more innocents will have to die before this one does?’
With a weary shake of his head, Lumley says, ‘At least one. We found Francis in his chamber this morning. It seems he didn’t trust your assurances. He’s hanged himself.’
43
Halfway down Black Bull Alley the front wall of the Magdalene almshouse sags out into the narrow street. An open sewer borders it like an insanitary moat. Bianca can smell the place from a hundred yards away. The front door is open. An old woman in a grubby, patched woollen kirtle sits on the step peeling vegetables with a blunt knife, her face raked with ancient furrows.
‘Is the overseer here?’ Bianca asks. ‘I wish to speak to him.’
The woman looks up. One of her eyes is glazed milk-white. There’s an abscess under the other the size of a half-angel coin. ‘If he is, he’ll be dead-drunk in his cot, snoring like a leviathan,’ she says, glancing to the far end of the almshouse where the overseer’s official dwelling spills out from the wall like a ruinous cattle byre. Bianca thanks her and leaves the old woman to her paring. When she reaches the place, she has to lean across the open drain to peer in through the tiny window. The squalid chamber is empty. On her return she asks the old woman, ‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘Who can say, duck?’
‘Then can you tell me where he might be?’
‘How should I know? Try the jumping-shop at the sign of the Blue Bear.’
‘But surely his duties are here, with you?’
‘Duties? He don’t know the meanin’ of the word. Sometimes he attends to them, sometimes he don’t. Mostly he don’t.’ She carefully gathers the vegetable peelings from the step and drops them into a fold in her kirtle for later use.
‘Then who looks after you?’
The woman laughs through her gums. ‘Us Magdalenes know how to fend for ourselves, duck. Every now and awhile the parish sends a churchwarden to look us over. Couple of times a year a physician comes down to give us ease–’
‘That’s dreadful,’ says Bianca with a guilty blush. While she’s sent salves and balms to the Magdalene when she’s been asked, she’s never actually been inside.
‘We manage,’ the woman says contemptuously, and directs a gobbet of phlegm into the drain. ‘Last time the pestilence came, they shut us away completely – for a fortnight. No food, no water, other than what we managed to save before they nailed up the door and painted a fucking great cross on it.’
‘This physician – when did he last come?’ asks Bianca, telling herself the question has nothing whatsoever to do with Katherine Vaesy.
‘Not long ago. A few weeks – a few days. Once you’ve been in the Magdalene a while, time don’t really work the same way it does for others.’
‘Can you remember what he looked like?’
‘Handsome enough, saving he looked more like a day-labourer than a quack. I had this elbow, see. Got a bit raw.’
Bianca squats down, heedless of the fact that the hem of her serge overgown is now firmly in the mire of the street. Looking through the open door, she gets a murky, insubstantial view of human bodies lying about listlessly in the fetid semi-darkness. She’s almost grateful for the open drain between her and the old woman.
‘He came with someone, I believe.’
‘That he did.’
‘A rich lady. A titled lady.’
The old woman shrugs as she slices at the vegetables. ‘Aye, she’s here every now and then.’