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but although Shaw and Lettice were willing to talk, they knew little of value. Then the parish constable arrived, and it immediately became apparent that the fellow was more interested in returning to the beer he had abandoned than gathering information – he would not be investigating the physician’s death.
    ‘I am not surprised,’ said Shaw, when he and Chaloner were standing out on the road together; Lettice was helping the laundress lay Coo out. ‘He probably thinks Baron is the culprit, and dares not rile him.’
    ‘Why are you no longer a banker?’ asked Chaloner, somewhat out of the blue.
    Shaw’s expression was far from pleasant. ‘Tulips.’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘They fetched extraordinarily high prices a few years ago, and I, like many others, traded in them. But it was a bubble – a speculative plan that collapsed. At its height, a single bulb was worth twelve acres of land. I might have weathered the storm had we bankers stuck together, but it was every man for himself. Yet losing all was a blessing in disguise.’
    ‘It was?’ asked Chaloner doubtfully.
    Shaw smiled, the first genuine one Chaloner had seen him give. ‘Selling music to the Court is a far more rewarding existence than banking could ever be. It is not just the war and this terrible scramble to raise money for the King, but there was the Colburn Crisis.’
    ‘My wife mentioned him. He gambled, and lost thousands of borrowed pounds.’
    Shaw winced. ‘
I
would have lent him money, had I been a goldsmith. He was a respectable vintner, who offered houses and land as collateral. Unfortunately, he had already lost these at cards, so bankers who expected a field or a cottage when he defaulted found themselves with nothing. Several have been ruined.’
    ‘Were Backwell and Taylor badly affected?’
    ‘Yes, but they are wealthy enough to weather the crisis. However, Percival Angier committed suicide, while John Johnson went mad. My heart goes out to their families.’
    Chaloner spent the rest of the evening talking to Cheapside residents about Wheler, Baron, Coo and DuPont, but learned nothing he did not already know. Wheler had been greedy, vicious and unpopular, and most people seemed glad he was no longer alive. By contrast, no one had a bad word to say about Coo, who was loved for his kindness and generosity.
    When the daylight had faded, and he was sure of not being seen, Chaloner walked to the New Coffee House on Gracious Street, which he knew to be a favourite haunt of Spymaster Williamson. It was not that he was keen to seek out such disagreeable company, but he needed to know more about DuPont if he was to discover what had possessed the dying Frenchman to wander across half the city. A conversation with Williamson might save him some time.
    The New Coffee House was a small but elegant establishment that attracted clerics and the wealthier kind of merchant – the sort of men who, unlike Chaloner, did not mind being seen hobnobbing with a person whose remit was to spy on the general populace. Its decor was discreetly affluent, and although it still reeked of pipe smoke and burned beans, there was also an underlying aroma of furniture polish and the lavender that had been set in bowls on the window sills.
    Chaloner walked in, appreciating its cosy warmth after the chill of a spring evening, and saw he was in luck: Joseph Williamson, Under Secretary of State and the current Spymaster General, was lounging by the fire. Williamson was a tall, aloof man who had been an Oxford academic before deciding to dabble in politics. He was smooth, ruthless and devious, and while he and Chaloner had been forced to work together in the past, it was an uneasy alliance, and neither trusted the other.
    Williamson’s eyebrows shot up in surprise when Chaloner sat next to him. ‘You!’ he exclaimed. ‘I thought you were chasing insurgents in Hull. Or, if Buckingham is to be believed, fomenting rebellion with your kin in