The Executioner of St Paul's: The Twelfth Thomas Chaloner Adventure (Adventures of Thomas Chaloner) by Susanna Gregory

Author:Susanna Gregory [Gregory, Susanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405530644
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2017-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Chaloner woke more refreshed than he would have expected after only three hours’ sleep, all of them taken outside. Dawn was breaking, so he fed his hens and collected the eggs, which he and Paget ate with a stew that, as far as he could tell, had been made exclusively from veins and mint.

When they had finished, Chaloner planned his day. The first thing was to arrest Pamela, preferably with Lawrence’s help lest her Mims were to hand. Once she was in Newgate, he would bring her to heel by charging her with the murders of Jasper and the Edwards boys, and then question her about her benefactor. She had told Suger that she did not know his name, but she might have been lying. And if not, she still might know something that would allow Chaloner to identify him. And identify him he must, because the more he thought about it, the more he became certain that the Executioner and her benefactor were one and the same.

Once Pamela was safely under lock and key, he would turn to other lines of enquiry. First, see if Thurloe had learned anything useful. Second, track down Denton and demand the truth about the spat with Harbert. Third, visit Harbert’s house and talk to his servants. Fourth, question the Hall brothers and Owen about the Agents of God. And finally, find out where Stone had gone.

He left the Mitre and walked along Cheapside to Lawrence’s mansion. Cary was there, already issuing the day’s orders to an army of harried clerks. The secretary wound up his briefing when he saw Chaloner waiting, and called for six volunteers to accompany them to King’s Head Court. The clerks continued to clamour questions at him while he and his guards readied themselves for the assault on Pamela.

‘Use beetroot juice instead,’ he snapped at the man who was complaining about a lack of red paint to make crosses on plague victims’ doors. ‘I imagine Rycroft will lend you some if you ask nicely.’

‘You tell me to build bonfires for fumigating the air, but I have neither the wood nor the men to help me,’ grumbled another. ‘What do we—’

‘Break up the abandoned stalls in St Paul’s Churchyard,’ interrupted Cary with asperity. ‘God’s blood man! Have you no initiative of your own? Chaloner – lend me a guinea.’ He snatched the coin and thrust it at the clerk. ‘There. That should buy you more than enough labour to see the scheme completed.’

‘Can you borrow another off him?’ asked one of the soldiers sullenly. ‘Because me and my mates haven’t been paid for three weeks now and—’

‘I will raise the matter with Lawrence the moment I return from Newgate.’ Cary’s face was turning redder, and Chaloner suspected it would not be long before his temper broke. He only hoped he would not be there when it happened. ‘You will get your money, never fear.’

‘If you return from Newgate,’ the man muttered darkly. ‘There is plague in that prison.’

Cary set

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