LITMIR.BIZ

      THE OFFICIAL NAME of the road was Portugal Street, in honour of our Queen, Catherine of Braganza, but everyone persisted in calling it Piccadilly. It was an old route west to Hyde Park and then towards Reading. Long ago, some of the land nearby had been owned by a man who had grown rich in the manufacture of those large old collars of cutwork lace named piccadills, and somehow the name had been transferred to the road. In recent years, the mansions of the rich had sprouted like monstrous mushrooms among the fields. The greatest of them all was Clarendon House.

      It was a vast building of raw, unweathered stone surrounded by high walls and tall railings. It faced Piccadilly, looking south down the hill to St James’s Palace, which seemed diminished and even a little squalid in comparison with its magnificent new neighbour. I had heard Mr Williamson say that the King was not pleased that the house of a subject should so outshine his own palaces.

      Most Londoners hated it, too. Here was Lord Clarendon in the splendour of his new house, while thousands of them had lost their own houses in the Fire. People called it Dunkirk House, for they said that the former Chancellor had profited hugely and corruptly from the government’s sale of that town, one of Cromwell’s conquests, to the French king.

      Though it was broad daylight, the main gates were barred. The gateposts were still blackened in places. During the riots in June, the mob had lit bonfires here and burned the trees that used to line the street outside. They would have burned the house itself if they could.

      The mob blamed him for all our ills, past and present, including the Queen’s failure to give the King an heir. They believed Clarendon had purposely found a barren wife for him so that his own grandchildren by the Duke of York would one day inherit the throne. They blamed him for our crushing defeat at the hands of the Dutch navy in the Battle of the Medway. They blamed him for everything. According to popular belief, no form of corruption was too large or too small for Lord Clarendon. It was even said that he had stolen the stone intended for rebuilding St Paul’s after the Fire and used it for his mansion.

      It was a house in mourning – not for Alderley, of course, but for Lady Clarendon. Her funeral hatchment hung over the gateway. Two manservants, both carrying arms, waited inside the gates under a temporary shelter. I presented my credentials and asked to be taken to Mr Milcote. His name was enough to allow me into the forecourt. One of the servants escorted me to a side door in the west side of the house and brought me to an antechamber draped with black. It was so large you could have fitted the whole of Infirmary Close into it, from kitchen to attic. I was left to wait under the suspicious eye of a porter while yet another servant went to find Mr Milcote.

      I heard his rapid footsteps before I saw him. He appeared in a doorway leading to a flight of stairs.

      ‘Mr Marwood – your servant, sir.’

      We exchanged bows. He was a tall, quietly dressed man in his thirties. His periwig was fair, and his complexion suggested that the natural colour of his hair was not far removed from the wig’s. He too was in mourning.

      ‘I hope they haven’t kept you waiting. We have not been able to be as hospitable here as my lord would have liked, unfortunately.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Recent events, you understand.’

      I nodded. There was an openness about Milcote that I liked at once, and also a sort of delicacy too, a sense of what was fitting for a situation. I said quietly, ‘I’m come on the King’s business.’

      He glanced at the waiting servants, took my arm and led me outside. ‘You mustn’t think me rude but it will be better if we talk outside.’ He looked up at the grey sky. ‘At least the rain is slackening.’

      We walked down the flagged path. The side of the house rose above us, austerely regular, blocking much of the light. We came to a gate of wrought iron, which Milcote unlocked to let us pass, and entered the garden at the back of the house.

      ‘I assume you have come about our … our recent discovery?’ he said.

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘My lord has much to occupy himself,’ he went on. If he had noticed the scars that the fire had left on the side of my face and my neck, he was too well bred to show it. ‘He may not be able to see you today.’

      ‘He knows I’m here?’

      ‘Oh yes. The Duke sent word that someone would come.’

      We paused at the corner of the house, looking out over the garden. It was on the same scale as the house – at least five or six acres, and surrounded by high walls. The paths had been laid out, and many shrubs had been planted. But there was an unfinished quality to it all: some areas were covered in old canvas sails, much patched and faded; and the paths were rutted and muddy. Oblivious to the weather, teams of gardeners were at work. Against the far wall were two pavilions, which were only partly built. One of them lacked a roof. Between them, a gap in the wall was blocked by a heavy wooden palisade.

      ‘It will be the greatest garden in London when it’s finished,’ Milcote said. ‘The designs are Mr Evelyn’s. It’s a pity that this … this accident should happen here.’

      ‘Where, exactly?’

      He pointed to the left-hand pavilion, the one with a roof. ‘Shall we go there directly?’

      Milcote guided me to a path running parallel to the side wall. Halfway down, he paused to command a gardener to keep himself and his fellows away from this part of the garden. I glanced back at the front of the house. I saw a white blur at the first-floor window nearest to the south-west corner. Someone was watching us, his face distorted and ghostly behind the glass. We walked on.

      ‘I’ve sent the builders away,’ Milcote said.

      ‘They arrived after the body was found?’

      ‘Yes. They could have continued on the other pavilion, but I thought it wiser that we should have as few strangers here as possible while we deal with this.’

      ‘Then who knows about it?’

      ‘Besides me, I believe only the servant who found the body, one Matthew Gorse, and Lord Clarendon himself.’

      ‘But the rest of the household must be curious?’

      ‘I put it about that we had discovered the roof to be unsafe, and nothing could be done there until new tiles arrived.’ Milcote frowned. ‘And I sent a message to the builders telling them not to come today. But we can’t keep everyone in ignorance for long.’

      The pavilion was of two storeys above a basement, with a balustrade masking the roof. Though the wall facing the garden was of stone, dressed similarly to the stone of the mansion,

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