Chaloner supposed he had. The snow that covered his clothes was continuing to melt, and he, like Turner’s sack, left drips wherever he went. He stepped out, and thought he saw alarm flash in the colonel’s eyes when he was recognised, but it was quickly masked.
‘What are you doing here?’ Turner demanded uneasily. ‘Temperance will be hurt when she learns you declined her invitation to dine, just so you could use the opportunity to sneak into her home and help yourself to her things.’
‘I am not the thief here,’ said Chaloner quietly. ‘I do not break in to the houses of elderly merchants when I think they are at church, and batter them half to death when I discover they are not.’
‘What is this?’ demanded Turner, struggling to feign bemusement. ‘What elderly merchant?’
Chaloner pointed to the sack. ‘The one you almost killed to get that. Do not deny it, Turner. Your ear-string dropped off during the attack, and identifies you as the culprit.’
Turner’s hand flew to his empty lobe in horror. Seeing he was trapped, he dropped the pretence of innocence, and tried another tactic. ‘This is not how it looks. I was worried about him keeping such a large sum in his house, so I decided to put it in a bank, where it will be safe. But he came back unexpectedly, and went for his gun. I panicked. I am not proud of myself, but it is what happened. It is all a terrible misunderstanding.’
‘If you say so,’ said Chaloner, too tired to argue with him. ‘But that is for a judge to decide.’
Turner shook his head in stunned disbelief. ‘This cannot be happening, not now! I have a job I love, wealthy ladies shower me with gifts, and Temperance is on the verge of giving me half her club. Those meetings at John’s Coffee House work! You ask for success with like-minded men, and lo and behold, success is yours.’
Chaloner was taken aback by the claim. ‘You attribute your recent rise in fortune to prayers?’
Turner shrugged. ‘Well, something caused my luck to change. I joined originally to gain Tryan’s confidence — to find out whether he really did have a fortune in his parlour. But when I realised prayers might be the key to my various triumphs, I decided I had better keep going. Do you want to enrol? I can get you in — in exchange for your silence about tonight’s little episode, naturally.’
Chaloner regarded him in disdain. ‘You are a callous dog, Turner. Or is your real name Grey?’
He drew his sword when Turner did not reply, glancing down when the hilt made a peculiar grating sound and something small and metallic fell from it and skittered across the floor. The blade was held in place by a thread, and would not survive the first parry. He cursed himself for not borrowing a better one from Tryan, because he should have anticipated how an encounter with Turner would end. At some point during his frantic race — probably when he had been knocked off his feet as Turner had been fleeing from Lymestrete — he had also lost the daggers he kept secreted about his person. Fortunately, the colonel noticed neither his lack of handy weapons nor the state of his sword. He began to back away.
‘Please!’ he cried, alarmed. ‘I am sure we can work this out without resorting to violence.’
‘We can,’ agreed Chaloner evenly. ‘And it entails you putting up your weapon and turning around.’
‘No!’ Turner’s face was as white as the snow that was falling outside. ‘They will execute me, and you know how I feel about hanging.’
Chaloner was unmoved. ‘Then you should have thought of that before you broke the law.’
Turner swallowed hard, clearly loath to engage in a skirmish he thought he was unlikely to win. Then he closed his eyes in weary resignation, and slowly reached out to place his sword on the nearest crate. Unfortunately, Chaloner’s blade chose that moment to drop out of its hilt. The colonel’s eyebrows shot up in astonishment, but his reactions were fast. He snatched up his weapon again, even as Chaloner darted towards it, and the spy was lucky to avoid the lunge that was aimed in his direction.
‘And you berated me for poor weapon maintenance the other night,’ Turner crowed, his confidence flooding back now he had the advantage. ‘Hypocrite!’
‘You are still not leaving this cellar a free man,’ warned Chaloner.
Turner laughed derisively. ‘And who will stop me? Not you, because you will be dead. You seem to know rather too much about me, and I do not want you telling tales to His Portliness.’
Chaloner grabbed an old broom that had been left lying on the floor. Turner might have the upper hand at that precise moment, but the spy had faced worse odds. All he needed to do was even them out a little. He looked around quickly, and a plan began to form in his mind.
‘I appreciate that the King’s statue posed an irresistible temptation for you,’ he said, jigging away from the stabbing blade. ‘But I will never forgive you for involving Temperance. Or Meg, although I cannot imagine she knew why you needed her cart.’
‘Meg would have demanded a share,’ said Turner, watching Chaloner with narrowed eyes as the spy weaved between the crates. ‘So I kept her in the dark. But how do you know I involved Temperance?’
The question took Chaloner by surprise, given where they were. ‘Other than the stolen bust being hidden in her cellar? Well, there is the note offering to sell it to Margaret Symons, which is in her handwriting. You persuaded her to scribe it, lest someone recognised your own scrawl.’
Turner grinned slyly. ‘It suits me to be cautious. She had no idea what she was scribbling about, though — I doubt her affection for me runs deep enough to defraud the King on my account.’
Chaloner was not so sure about that. He moved further behind the sculpture as Turner continued to speak. His ploy to distract the man by encouraging him to gloat was working — like many criminals, he could not resist bragging about his achievements.
‘I assumed some wealthy Royalist would buy it, but the King made such a fuss about its loss that I dared not approach any. I had no idea he would miss it so much. God knows why — it is ugly.’
‘It is of his father,’ said Chaloner, astounded not only by the man’s ignorance of art, but by his lack of understanding for his victim. ‘Of course he will miss it.’
‘I tried selling it to artists in the end,’ Turner went on, waving his free hand to indicate Chaloner did not know what he was talking about. ‘And I even offered it to Greene, thinking he might exchange it for a pardon. He was a fool to refuse, because I do not see how else he will evade the noose.’
‘You think he is guilty?’ Chaloner stumbled when Turner managed to land a sly jab with his sword. It did no harm, but the colonel had moved fast, and Chaloner knew he would have to be careful. His lame leg was slowing him down, and the trek through the snow had taken too great a toll on his strength — unlike Turner, he did not have the exhilaration of a successful burglary to fuel him.
The colonel nodded. ‘I wanted to believe he was the victim of a monstrous conspiracy, as you suggested, but there are too many inexplicable coincidences. He must have killed those three clerks because they were more successful than him, and he was jealous.’
One more jig put Chaloner in the position he had been aiming for — with Turner trapped between two tall boxes where he would be unable to make full use of his sword. He took a firmer grip on the broom, readying himself for attack. Turner was still chattering.
‘I thought it would be easy to make a tidy profit from the statue, because everyone here is so fabulously gullible. For example, selling those lockets to swooning women has been child’s play.’
The confession made Chaloner falter. ‘You sold those keepsakes?’ he asked, astounded by the man’s audacity. ‘I thought you dispensed them to make each lady think she was special.’
Turner’s smug grin was back. ‘I did — I just wheedled a small donation from her at the same time. They are wealthy lasses, and do not mind lending me money for my poor sick mother.’