The King’s Evil. Andrew Taylor

place?’

      ‘How did you know him?’ Clarendon paused and glanced at Milcote; I had the sense that a silent message had passed between them.

      Milcote cleared his throat. ‘I had some acquaintance with him years ago, my lord – in the years of his prosperity.’

      ‘Before his father’s downfall, you mean. A more treacherous rogue never existed.’

      ‘Whatever his father was, Edward Alderley was kind to me then.’ Milcote cleared his throat again. ‘When I met him a few months ago, his condition was sadly altered. I believe he had tried to improve what was left of his fortunes at the tables.’

      ‘A gambler.’ Clarendon’s voice was harsh. ‘The most stupid of all mankind.’

      ‘He was trying to change his ways. He wanted to improve his condition by wiser means – he asked for my help.’

      ‘So, like the fool you are, you lent him money, I suppose?’

      ‘Yes, my lord – a little – enough to pay his most pressing debts.’

      ‘You’re too soft-hearted, George. You’ve seen the last of that.’

      Not just soft-hearted, I thought, but gullible enough to be taken in by a rogue like Edward Alderley.

      ‘He told me he was searching for some respectable form of employment,’ Milcote went on. ‘I promised to look around for him. I would have asked you, but I knew you would have no time for him.’

      ‘So you are not altogether a fool.’ Clarendon didn’t return the smile but there was a touch of warmth in his voice. ‘And what was he doing here? And in the pavilion?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘My lord,’ I said, growing a little impatient. ‘I understand that the only other person who knows of this man’s death is the servant who unlocked the pavilion this morning and found the body.’

      Clarendon looked sharply at me. He did not take kindly to those who spoke before they were spoken to. ‘First things first. Have I your word that you will be discreet? I can’t afford a scandal at this time.’

      ‘Yes, my lord.’

      ‘If the news gets out, I shall know who to blame.’ He looked steadily at me. ‘You would not like to be my enemy.’

      I refused to allow him to intimidate me. I had the King’s warrant. ‘May I have your permission to speak to the servant?’

      ‘Of course.’ Clarendon glanced at Milcote. ‘Who was it?’

      ‘Gorse, my lord.’

      ‘I don’t know him. Have him brought to me.’

      ‘Unfortunately he’s not here.’ Milcote lowered his voice. ‘The mourning rings.’

      ‘You may know,’ Clarendon said to me in a flat voice purged of emotion, ‘my wife died last month.’

      ‘Gorse is delivering mourning rings for my lady today,’ Milcote explained. ‘Mainly to former dependants and acquaintances. So he will be here and there all over London. He should be back after dinner. But I don’t know when.’

      ‘Is he trustworthy?’ Clarendon said.

      ‘I believe so, my lord – I knew him in his old place, and suggested him to the steward.’

      ‘I want this riddle solved,’ Clarendon said, still looking at me. ‘Do you understand? For my sake as well as the King’s. You may make what enquiries you need to in my house, but Milcote must accompany you at all times, inside and out.’

      I nodded. ‘As you wish, my lord.’

      ‘My late wife was fond of that pavilion,’ he went on, his voice softening. ‘It was an old banqueting hall – she remembered it fondly from her youth. I wanted to tear it down and build it anew to match everything else. But she pleaded with me, and in the end I agreed to preserve at least part of it, though I insisted on its being remodelled to match the rest of my house and garden.’ He paused, staring at me. ‘Are you married, Mr Marwood?’

      I shook my head.

      ‘No? If you ever are, you will find that it is a matter of perpetual compromise.’ His voice trailed away, and he turned his head to look out of the window.

      ‘Alderley’s body was found in the well, my lord,’ I said. ‘Was that part of the old building?’

      ‘Yes.’ He looked at me again, and his eyes were brighter than before. ‘Lady Clarendon was particularly attached to its water. She said it was always cold, even on the hottest day, and that the spring that feeds it is unusually pure. Indeed, she believed it to be the purest in London.’ His voice changed, and I knew without knowing how that he was furiously angry. ‘This body has sullied my wife’s well, Marwood. It has polluted the spring. Tell the King that I want this made clean for her sake.’

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      NOW CAME THE worst part, which I had been dreading from the start. Milcote and I returned to the pavilion to examine the body more closely. I postponed this unpleasant necessity by examining a wicket gate in the back wall of the garden. It was set in the temporary palisade that covered the place where the garden gates would eventually be installed. The wicket was locked and bolted. Milcote said it was rarely used, except occasionally by gardeners and the builders during the day.

      Next I went up to inspect the main apartment on the first floor of the pavilion. The work was more advanced here than it was below. The windows were glazed and barred. At the top of the stairs was the door to the viewing platform. It too was locked and bolted.

      At last I could no longer delay the inevitable. In the basement, Milcote and I stripped off Edward Alderley’s outer clothing. It was no easy matter, even with two of us, to manoeuvre his body. Alderley had always been a big, overweight man and, since I had last seen him, he had become even grosser.

      Intimate contact with the dead, I thought, this prying into the consequences of death, should be growing easier for me since the events of the last twelve months. But custom had not yet formed a callus over my squeamishness; perhaps it never would.

      ‘How did Gorse know that someone was in the well?’ I asked as we were tugging Alderley’s arms from his sleeves.

      ‘The cover was off,’ Milcote said. ‘And he stumbled on Alderley’s hat, which was on the floor. He had the wit to look down the shaft.’

      ‘Why was he in the pavilion at all at that hour? Was that usual?’

      ‘No. But Mr Hakesby was expecting a delivery of lime, and he couldn’t get here himself until later. So I sent Gorse instead. He unlocked the garden door and then he came down to the basement to open the windows. The atmosphere is damp, and we try to keep the place aired. It was still dark down here, and he had a lantern.’

      The body’s legs flopped on to the stone floor, and a long, lingering blast of wind erupted from the corpse’s belly.

      ‘God’s heart,’ Milcote said. ‘What a job is this. Does one ever get used to it?’

      ‘Probably not,’ I said curtly. How did he think I spent my days, I thought – laying out corpses?

      I noted that the body was not in that phase of rigidity that corpses pass through after death. Perhaps the coldness of the well water had delayed its onset. If only, I thought, there were an exact way of measuring temporal gradations of decay, we should be able to deduce when Alderley had drowned, or at least to narrow down the time when it had happened. All we knew at present was that he had died between Saturday evening, when Hakesby and the builders had locked up, and this morning when