The Piccadilly Plot Read Online Free PDF Page A

before answering the
     summons. Lester was almost beside himself with agitation, while Elliot’s face was whiter than that of his victim.
    ‘I want …’ Cave gasped. His flicked a hand at Elliot. ‘Him … I must …’
    Elliot approached reluctantly. He knelt when Cave started to speak, but the singer’s words were inaudible, and he was obliged
     to lean closer. Cave’s arm jerked suddenly, and Elliot bellowed in pain. When Elliot recoiled, there was a dagger protruding
     from his stomach. Chaloner stared at Cave in disbelief, and did not think he had ever seen an expression of such black malice
     on the face of a dying man.
    Groaning, Elliot struggled to his feet, hauling out the blade as he did so. It slipped from his fingers to clatter on the
     cobbles. He lurched towards Lester, who escorted him away. No one made any attempt to stop them.
    ‘Well,’ murmured Dugdale, arms folded. ‘I suppose that was a neat end to this insalubrious affair. The King’s singer is speared,
     but at least his killer did not escape unscathed.’
    ‘Is Elliot dead?’ asked Cave weakly. ‘Did I kill him?’
    ‘Almost certainly,’ replied Dugdale, prodding the dropped dagger with the toe of his elegant shoe. It was stained red to the
     hilt.
    ‘Good,’ breathed Cave. Then his head lolled suddenly, and the breath hissed out of him.
    Chaloner sat back on his heels, overwhelmed by the stupidity of it all.
    As it would not be right to leave Cave in the street, Chaloner paid a carter to transport the body to the Westminster charnel
     house. He had no idea whether corpses from The Strand would be welcome there, but he was not sure where else to take it. Dugdale
     was right in that much of London was still a mystery to him, and while he knew exactly how to dispose of cadavers in Amsterdam,
     The Hague, Paris, Lisbon, Bruxelles, Hamburg, Venice, Madrid and several other major cities, he was not sure what to do with
     one in his own country.
    ‘We had better make sure the charnel-house keeper will accept him,’ he said to Dugdale after the cart and its grim cargo had
     rattled away. ‘As you pointed out, Cave held a royal appointment, so it is our duty to see him treated with respect.’
    ‘I am not setting foot in a place like that,’ declared Dugdale with a fastidious shudder. ‘You go. I shall return to the Earl,
     and inform him that you are unavoidably delayed. He will be irked to be kept waiting, but I shall do my best to mollify him.’
    Chaloner suspected he would do nothing of the kind, and that the opportunity would be used to blacken his name. But it could
     not be helped – common decency dictated that he should ensure Cave’s body was properly looked after, and that was that.
    The Westminster charnel house was located in a narrow lane near the Thames, between a granary and a warehouse where coal was
     stored. It was an unprepossessing place, in a particularly dingy area. By the time Chalonerarrived Cave had been delivered, and the cart and its driver had gone so the lane was deserted and eerily quiet. He opened
     the door with some reluctance, grimacing at the damp chilliness and stench of decay that immediately wafted out at him.
    The charnel house comprised a mortuary at the back, with two handsomely appointed chambers at the front where the owner went
     through the formalities of death with the bereaved. John Kersey had made a fortune from dealing with the dead, partly by offering
     guided tours to wealthy ghouls, but also from the small museum he had established to display some of the more unusual artefacts
     he had collected over the years. He was a neat, dapper little man, whose elegant clothes were made by bespoke tailors. He
     did not, as Chaloner had first assumed, deck himself out in items reclaimed from corpses.
    That morning, he was entertaining a friend, and Chaloner’s heart sank when he recognised the loudly ebullient tones of Richard
     Wiseman, Surgeon to the King. Kersey kept Wiseman supplied with