The Westminster Poisoner

By Susanna Gregory

Published Jan 2010

A Thomas Chaloner Adventure in Restoration London

Christmas in London in 1663 is a very different festival from those marked in Cromwell’s day. The decorations of mistletoe and ivy are no longer banned, families can gather beside yule log fires and share seasonal treats without fear of punishment. For some this is a far from welcome change, such revelries interrupting the important work of State. One such is Christopher Vine, a clerk in the Treasury. Respected for his diligence and probity, he eschews the company of his family, and instead works in solitary piety in the Painted Chamber of the Palace of Westminster. But he is not alone. A killer waits in the draughty, dusty hall to ensure Vine will not celebrate another Christmas.

Vine is not the only government official to die this season. A few days before, James Chetwynd, his colleague in Chancery, perished in remarkably similar circumstances. It was a murder that alarmed Thomas Chaloner’s employer, the Lord Chancellor. Investigating the deaths of such officials is not in his remit but, in the malicious atmosphere of White Hall, the Lord Chancellor cannot trust his enemies to uncover the truth. Certain that another clerk, Greene, is the killer, he instructs Chaloner, his private spy, to prove it.

Chaloner, though, can prove otherwise: at the time Vine was drawing his last breath he himself had Greene under surveillance at his home in Wapping. Unravelling the motives behind his employer’s conviction that Greene is the killer is as complex as discovering the real murderer, and he begins to dig into a stinking seam of corruption, where the pickings are so rich that men are prepared to go to any lengths to profit from them. Corruption that leads towards the Royal apartments and that threatens to make Christmas 1663 Chaloner’s last…