The Cheapside Corpse Read Free

put aside at least some of their earnings for a rainy day. She disagreed, and some very fierce arguments had ensued.
    A hackney carriage was parked outside, which meant she had guests. Chaloner’s heart sank. He disliked the hedonistic, vacuous courtiers Hannah chose as friends, and he had hoped she would be alone. He bypassed the front door and headed for the back one, aiming to slip up the stairs and change his travel-stained clothes before she saw him – more than one quarrel had erupted because he had joined a soirée in a less than pristine condition. With luck, by the time he was presentable, the visitors might have gone.
    He strolled into the kitchen and was met by the warm, welcoming scent of new bread. All the servants were there. The housekeeper sat at the table with her account book, the cook-maid fussed over the loaf she had just removed from the oven, the scullion swept the floor, and the footman and the page perched on a window sill, polishing boots.
    It was a comfortable scene, yet Chaloner immediately sensed an atmosphere. The staff were a surly horde, and he had often wondered how Hannah had managed to select so many malcontents. The housekeeper was inflexible and domineering; the cook-maid, scullion and footman were lazy and dishonest; and the page, old enough to be Chaloner’s grandfather and thus elderly for such a post, was incurably disrespectful. But even by their standards, the kitchen was not a happy place that particular day: all were uneasy, and the girls had been crying.
    ‘Oh,’ said the housekeeper disagreeably, when she saw Chaloner. ‘You are back.’
    It was no way to greet the master of the house, but she was secure in the knowledge that her long association with Hannah’s family meant she would never be dismissed, no matter how discourteously she behaved. She was a lean, cadaverous woman whose loose black clothes and beady black eyes always reminded Chaloner of a crow. He did not check her for impertinence that day, however, because she was so wan that he wondered if she was ill.
    ‘Who is with Hannah?’ he asked, startled and suspicious when the others came to offer a variety of curtsies, bows and tentative smiles. They usually followed the housekeeper’s example of sullen contempt, and he was unused to deference from them.
    ‘They did not leave their names,’ replied the footman. ‘But they have been here before. The mistress owes them money, see.’
    Chaloner felt the stirrings of unease. Hannah had accrued some serious debts the previous winter, and it had not been easy to settle them all. Appalled by how close they had come to fiscal disaster, she had promised to be more careful while he was away. Chaloner had believed her assurances, and was alarmed to learn that he might have been overly trusting.
    ‘Money for what?’ he asked.
    ‘Everyone at Court is in arrears with payments for things these days,’ said the housekeeper evasively. ‘So she is not alone.’
    ‘No, indeed,’ put in the scullion. ‘Will Chiffinch and Bab May owe tens of thousands.’
    Supposing clean clothes would have to wait, Chaloner aimed for the drawing room. Hannah was proud of this chamber. It boasted a French clock, a Dutch chaise longue, and the walls had been covered with paper, an extravagance that had been decried by Cromwell’s Puritans, but that was a very popular fashion among the reinstated Royalists.
    He arrived to find Hannah sitting on a chair looking frightened, while two louts loomed over her. The knife he always carried in his sleeve slipped into his hand, and he started towards them, but he had not anticipated a third man lurking behind the door. He jerked away in time to avoid the blow directed at his head, but it left him off balance, which gave the other two time to launch an attack. He deflected one punch with a hastily raised arm, but another caught him on the chin and down he went. Hannah’s cry of relief at his appearance turned to a shriek of alarm.
    Blinking to clear