LITMIR.BIZ

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you ever go there?’

      Milcote shook his head. ‘We met at a tavern or he came here. He grumbled about how small his lodgings were. And it was mortgaged, too, and he’d had to let part of it to a carpenter.’ He gave me a rueful smile. ‘I think he was ashamed. He didn’t want me to see how mean his condition had become. In truth, I didn’t know him that well, but I felt sorry for him.’

      I turned back to the body. Alderley’s mouth had fallen open. I took up the sword. It was a narrow blade of fine steel. Two silk ribbons, one red and one blue, had been knotted around the hilt. Perhaps some lady had given them to him to wear as her favour. A design had been engraved on the blade just below the hilt. I held the sword up to the light and recognized the form of a pelican eating its young, the Alderley crest.

      ‘It’s an old Clemens Horn,’ Milcote said. He stretched out his hand and touched the blade with lingering respect, as a man might touch the hand of a beautiful woman who did not belong to him. ‘German. Must be nigh on fifty years old, but you won’t find a better sword.’

      ‘I should like to see the well,’ I said.

      It was a relief to move away from the body. Milcote and I lifted off the cover and laid it on the floor. It moved easily. A man could have removed it by himself, if necessary. Or, for that matter, a woman.

      Milcote crouched on the edge and held the lantern over the void. I could see nothing beyond its light. At my request, he took a rope and attached it to the ring at the top of the lantern. He lowered the light into the well. It glistened on cleanly cut masonry – the shaft was lined with stone, not brick.

      Another thought struck me – and again I kept it to myself. I liked what I had seen of Milcote but he and I served different masters.

      The lantern twisted and turned as it descended. It seemed to take weeks for it to reach the water.

      ‘Mr Hakesby measured it,’ Milcote said. ‘It’s about forty feet to the water level. And the depth of the water is another twenty feet, more or less.’

      I remembered the bruises and scrapes on Alderley’s body. Could he swim? I imagined him thrashing about in the well, desperately trying to find a handhold, a toehold, on that smooth, curved masonry. And all the time, the water drawing him down into its cold embrace.

      I could not afford these thoughts, and I seized on a distraction. ‘How did you get the body out?’ It was such an obvious question that I was ashamed that it hadn’t occurred to me before.

      ‘Gorse and I used the hoist.’ Milcote waved his free hand in the direction of the wooden framework I had noticed in the corner of the cellar behind the well, beside a pile of scaffolding. ‘It’s the masons’. They used it when they were repointing the well. Gorse went down, and he got a couple of hooks in Alderley’s belt.’

      ‘He must be a capable man,’ I said. ‘Rather him than me.’

      ‘He’s seen worse, I daresay,’ Milcote said. ‘He told me he was once apprenticed to a butcher, though he and his master did not suit. But before he left his indentures, he must have moved his fair share of carcases.’

      The lantern was swaying a few inches above the black and oily surface of the water.

      ‘Dear God,’ I cried. ‘What’s that?’

      Something was moving on the water, something dark and glistening, something alive.

      Milcote laughed. ‘It’s Alderley’s periwig, sir.’ He laughed again, and it seemed to me there was an edge of hysteria to his mirth. ‘What did you think it could be?’

      ‘I scarcely know.’

      ‘Shall I send Gorse or someone down again to fetch it?’

      ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can leave it there to rot.’

      ‘Someone will want it. It must be worth a few pounds.’

      Milcote hauled up the lantern. ‘I wonder,’ he said, turning aside to drape the coil of rope over the hoist. ‘I believe that perhaps Alderley’s death was an accident after all.’ He faced me again and went on in a low, rapid tone, ‘Suppose he came here of his own accord during the day – bribed his way into the garden – and hid himself here, meaning to rob the house when all was quiet. And then in the dark, he stumbled …’

      His voice trailed away. What of the mastiffs, I thought, the night-watchmen, the bolts, the bars, locks and all the other precautions that Clarendon took to keep his palace safe from intruders?

      ‘You must know, sir,’ Milcote went on with sudden urgency, ‘Lord Clarendon has many enemies. If someone like the Duke of Buckingham heard of this, he would find ways to use it against him – perhaps even accuse him of arranging Alderley’s murder. Surely it would be better for everyone – for the King and the Duke of York, as well as my lord – if the body weren’t here?’

      ‘What do you mean?’ I said, my voice cold.

      ‘Lord Clarendon is the last man to wish to stand in the way of justice, but Mr Alderley is dead, and we can’t change that, either by accident or by his own design.’ He gestured at the dead man, shrouded in his long shirt. ‘Couldn’t he be found somewhere else? It would be an innocent subterfuge, which would harm no one, least of all him. Indeed, it would protect Alderley’s reputation. Otherwise men might say that he intended some knavery by coming here.’

      He held the lantern higher, trying to make out my expression, and waited for me to speak.

      ‘And it would protect Lord Clarendon, too, in this difficult time,’ he rushed on. ‘The poor man has enough troubles already without this. I wish to spare him the addition of this one. He is a good man, sir, and an honourable one, whatever his enemies say.’

      ‘I don’t doubt it,’ I said.

      ‘All we would need do is move Alderley out of the garden and leave him in one of the market gardens near the Oxford road.’ Milcote followed me out of the basement. ‘Perhaps in a pond, to explain the water … Then it would look as if he had been robbed and murdered by thieves. No one could say any differently.’

      I said nothing. We replaced the cover on the well and climbed the stairs in silence. At the door, I waited for Milcote to find the key.

      He shook his head as if reproving himself. ‘Forgive me, sir. You must think my wits are astray. Pray forget what I said. I hardly know what I’m saying.’

      After we had searched the body and examined the rest of the pavilion, I dined privately with Milcote in the steward’s quarters. He did not press me further with his arguments for moving the body. I had the impression that part of him was ashamed of having suggested it. Not that I condemned him – indeed, I honoured him for it in one way, because I realized that his loyalty to Lord Clarendon lay behind it.

      I scarcely noticed what I ate, and we had little conversation. My mind was full of what I had learned in the last two hours. Our inspection of the pavilion had made it clear that the lower windows were barred and the upper ones were secure. The roof appeared intact. There was a viewing platform at the top, but the door to it, which was at the head of the staircase that had brought us down to the basement, was bolted and barred from the inside.

      In other words, the door from the garden appeared to be the only point of access. And there were – as both Milcote and later the steward confirmed – only four keys to it: Lord Clarendon’s, the steward’s, Milcote’s – and Hakesby’s.

      Before we left the pavilion, I had examined both the lock and Milcote’s copy of the key. I was no expert but I could see that it was a modern lock; the wards of the key were designed to turn four levers within the lock, and each was a different size from the others. To copy a key like this, I suspected, would require the services of a skilled locksmith. There was no sign of the mechanism having been forced.

      To add to the mystery, the garden was full of people by day and overlooked from the house. No stranger could have passed through unobserved.

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