Free A Murder on London Bridge by Susanna Gregory Page B

hazardous, and Hannah had been widowed once already. He said nothing, thinking it was none of the Earl’s affair.
    ‘Of course, she is old for bearing children,’ the Earl went on. ‘But you may be lucky.’
    Chaloner was not sure he wanted children, for the same reason that he was not sure he wanted a wife. Besides, he had had them once, and had lost them to the plague. It was not an experience he was keen to repeat.
    ‘Did you say you wanted to discuss the murder of Blue Dick Culmer?’ he asked, to bring an end to a discussion that was becoming uncomfortable for him.
    The Earl looked hurt when he saw his fatherly advice was not appreciated. ‘Yes, I suppose we had better,’ he said, with a wounded sniff. ‘He was a zealot, like his colleagues Dowsing and Herring. They went about their work with a fervour that was sickening, and dozens of our finest churches will never be the same again.’
    ‘I do not know Herring,’ said Chaloner, although everyone had heard of Dowsing, the man famous for smashing his way through the religious buildings of East Anglia.
    ‘These days, he is the churchwarden of St Mary Woolchurch, here in London. But during Cromwell’s ascendancy, he did a lot of damage to chapels in Essex. Such fanatics must be silenced, and everyone made to worship God as the Anglican Church sees fit.’
    ‘I see,’ said Chaloner flatly.
    ‘Stephen Goff told me that Herring and Blue Dick were girding their loins for mischief and . . .’ The Earl trailed off, looking pained. He had let slip something that he had meant to keep to himself.
    ‘Stephen Goff?’ pounced Chaloner. ‘Who is he?’
    ‘No one you know.’ The Earl rubbed his hands together briskly, trying to gloss over his blunder. ‘Just a friend in the Dowager’s household. But to return to our dead iconoclast—’
    ‘Not Father Stephen?’ asked Chaloner, recalling the nervous, dark-haired priest who had been at Somerset House the previous night. If the Earl had recruited him to spy, then it was small wonder the poor fellow was uneasy!
    The Earl looked annoyed. ‘You are too sharp for your own good. But yes: Stephen Goff is the Dowager’s chaplain, and supplies me with information from time to time. However, his position is a precarious one, and I promised him I would keep his identity a secret.’
    ‘Why would he help you?’ asked Chaloner suspiciously. ‘You make no secret of your dislike of Catholics, so why has he allied himself to your camp?’
    ‘Because he is a decent soul who is appalled by the Dowager’s plots to harm me,’ snapped the Earl. ‘And because we became friends when we were in exile together. We have known each other for years, and I trust him completely. He may be a papist, but he is a good man.’
    Chaloner was unconvinced, but knew better than to argue. He changed tack. ‘How does Stephen Goff know that Blue Dick and Herring were “girding their loins for mischief”?’
    The Earl shrugged. ‘He has his own set of informants, I imagine.’
    Chaloner frowned as something else occurred to him. ‘There was a Goff who signed the old king’s death warrant . . .’
    ‘That was Will Goff,’ supplied the Earl. ‘He fled to New England when he realised he was going to be executed for his crimes, although we have dispatched agents to hunt him down.’
    Unbidden, a sudden, vivid memory of Will Goff flashed into Chaloner’s mind, one that had lain dormant for years. Goff had visited the Chaloner estates in Buckinghamshire, when Chaloner had been a child – a lean, unsmiling man with dark, almost foreign features. He had made a nuisance of himself with demands for music. It had been high summer, and Chaloner recalled his resentment at being forced to remain indoors all day, to entertain the guest with his bass viol.
    ‘I met him once,’ he said, sufficiently startled by the clarity of the recollection to blurt it out.
    The Earl eyed him balefully. ‘I suppose I should not be surprised, given your