“I believe so,” I said. “If it is not, then a large number of face painters are wasting their time and telling us lies.”

“Interpret away, then. We can experiment to see the usefulness of the doctrine. Or the level of your skill.”

“Well,” I said, carefully studying the man once more as he walked humbly back to his place and without complaint took his seat. “I am no artist and am not trained in the matter, but he is a man in his late forties, with the air of one born to serve and obey. Not a man who has ever held authority or power. Not favored by fortune, although not poor. A gentleman, but of a lowly sort.”

“A good start,” Lower commented. “Continue.”

“Not a man used to imposing himself. With none of the manner or standing of one who might cut a dash in the world. Rather the opposite—his demeanor suggests someone who will always be overlooked and ignored.”

“Aha. Any more?”

“One of nature’s supplicants,” I said, warming to my theme now. “You can see from the way he approached, and the way he suffered his rebuff. Clearly, he is accustomed to such treatment.”

Lower nodded. “Excellent,” he said. “A truly useful experiment.”

“Was I correct?”

“Let us say it was an interesting set of observations. Ah. The play is beginning again. Splendid.”

I groaned inwardly—he was right, and the players were coming on once more, fortunately for the denouement. I could have done better myself—rather than a morally pleasing resolution, the king and his daughter die just at the moment that any reasonable playwright would see that they must live for there to be any moral instruction in the play at all. But, of course, by then everyone else is dead as well and the stage a virtual charnel house, so I suppose they just decided to follow suit, for want of anyone to talk to.

I emerged rather dazed, not having seen so much blood since we anatomized Dr. Grove. Fortunately, Lower suggested an inn immediately afterward. As I needed a stiff drink to recover, I did not even demur when Locke and Wood decided to join us—not my idea of ideal company, but after such a performance I would have taken a drink with Calvin himself, had it been necessary.

By the time we’d walked across town and settled down in the Fleur-de-Lys, Lower had told Locke of my comments about the man’s demeanor, which produced nothing more than a sneering smile.

“If I’m wrong, you should tell me how,” I said a little heatedly, not liking at all to be used for sport in this fashion. “Who was this man?”

“Go on, Wood. You are the repository of all human gossip. You tell him.”

Clearly pleased to be included in our company and relishing his moment of attention, Wood took a sip of his drink, and called over to the serving hatch for a pipe to be brought. Lower added his call for one as well, but I declined. Not that I object to a little tobacco in the evening, especially when my bowels are tight, but sometimes pipes which have been overused by the general clientele of taverns do have a taste of sour spittle. Most do not mind, I know, but I find it unpleasant and only smoke from my own.

“Well,” Wood began in his pedantic fashion when he was refilled with ale and safely alight, “this little man who is so much one of life’s failures, so much a natural servant, so much a supplicant, is in fact John Thurloe.”

He stopped here for dramatic effect, rather as though I should be impressed. I asked him a bit more sharply than was strictly necessary who, exactly, was John Thurloe?

“Never heard of him?’’ he said with an air of amazement. “Many in Venice have. And almost everywhere else in Europe. For near ten years that man murdered, stole, bribed and tortured his way across this land and others. He once—and not so very long ago—held the fate of kingdoms in his hand, and played with monarchs and statesmen as though they were mere puppets.”

He paused again, and finally realized that he wasn’t being clear. “He was Cromwell’s Secretary of State,” he explained, as though talking to a child. Truly, the man irritated me. “His spy master. Responsible for keeping the Commonwealth secure and Cromwell alive, a task he accomplished with great success, for Cromwell died in his bed. While John Thurloe was there, no assassin ever got close. He had spies everywhere—if ever there was a conspiracy by the king’s men, John Thurloe knew about it before they did themselves. He even planned some of their plots himself, I am told, just for the pleasure of destroying them. As long as he had Cromwell’s confidence, there were no controls on what he could do at all. None at all. It was Thurloe, they say, who lured Jack Prestcott’s father into betraying the king.”

“That little man?” I said in astonishment. “But if that’s true, what is he doing walking around and going to plays? Surely any sensible government would have hanged him as quickly as possible.”

Wood shrugged, unwilling to admit to not knowing something. “A mystery of state. But he lives quietly, a few miles from here. By all accounts he sees no one, and has made his peace with the government. Naturally, all those who swarmed around him when he had power no longer even remember his name.”

“Including John Wallis, evidently.”

“Ah, yes,” Wood said, his eyes twinkling, “including him. Dr. Wallis is a man with an instinct for power. He can smell it. I am sure the first inkling a man of state has of his downfall is when John Wallis stops paying court.”

Everybody likes tales of dark and obscure happenings, and I was no different. Wood’s tale of Thurloe gave an insight into the kingdom. Either the returned king was so secure that he could allow such people their freedom without fear, or he was so weak he could not bring them to justice. It would have been different in Venice—Thurloe would long ago have been devoured by the Adriatic fishes.

“And this man Wallis? He intrigues me…”

But I found out no more, as a young man I recognized as the magistrate’s servant came to our table and stood there stiffly until Lower put him out of his misery by asking him his business.

“I am looking for Mr. Cola and Dr. Lower, sir.”

We acknowledged ourselves. “And what do you want?”

“Sir John requires your immediate presence at his house in Holy well.”

“Now?” asked Lower. “Both of us? It is past nine, and we have not even eaten.”

“I believe it cannot wait. It is a matter of the utmost urgency,” the lad replied.

“Never keep a man waiting if he has the power to hang you,” Locke said encouragingly. “You’d better go.”

The house on Holywell seemed warm and inviting as we arrived and waited in the hallway before being ushered in to the interview room once more. The fire blazed in the open hearth, and I warmed myself before it, conscious again of how cold the country was in winter, and how underheated were my own lodgings. I was also, I realized, formidably hungry.

The magistrate was decidedly stiffer than he had been only that morning. Once the formalities were over, he led us into the little room, and sat us both down.

“You work very late, Sir John,” Lower said amiably.

“Not through choice, doctor,” he replied. “But this is a matter which cannot wait.”

“It must be serious, then.”

“It is indeed. It concerns Mr. Crosse. He came to see me this afternoon and I wish to check his credentials as he is not a gentleman, although, no doubt, eminently trustworthy in all respects.”

“Examine away, then. What about old Crosse? He is as good a man as I know, and gives false weight only rarely, and then only to customers he does not know.”

“He brought his ledger of sales from his shop,” the magistrate said, “which shows quite clearly that a substantial quantity of arsenic was bought four months ago by Sarah Blundy, a serving girl of this town.”

“I see.”

“Blundy was discharged by Grove for ill-behavior on that same day,” the magistrate continued. “She comes from a violent family.”