Hill’s lodgings were certainly not used. Perhaps the spot chosen was the room in the same passage where Prance said that the body had lain during one night.[285] The drops of white wax which Burnet afterwards saw must have here been spilt upon the dead man’s clothes. Godfrey himself never used wax candles.[286] On Wednesday night the body was removed from Somerset House and carried to the field in which it was found. That it was not taken through the gate is made certain by the sentries’ evidence. It must therefore have been carried through a private door. Thence it was taken in a carriage to the foot of Primrose Hill; marks of coach wheels were seen in the ground leading towards the spot in a place where coaches were not used to be driven.[287] Godfrey’s sword was driven through his body, and the corpse was left lying in the ditch, where it was found next day. In lodgings near Wild House lived four men. Two of them were Le Fevre and Walsh, parties to the murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey; the others were Captain William Bedloe, “the discoverer of the Popish Plot,” and his coadjutor, Charles Atkins. Atkins had declared before the secretary of state that he lodged at Holborn, but Bedloe let the truth appear in his examination. As it was a slip, which he immediately tried to cover, and he was far from bringing it forward as a point in his favour, his statement may be accepted.[288] Bedloe was thus in daily contact with two of the criminals. He was on terms of intimacy with them. They went about in his company and confided in him enough to allow him to be present at secret celebration of the mass.[289] From this quarter Bedloe’s information was derived. It is easy to conjecture how he could have obtained it. Walsh and Le Fevre were absent from their lodgings for a considerable part of the nights of Saturday and Wednesday, October 12 and 16. Bedloe’s suspicions must have been aroused, and either by threats or cajolery he wormed part of the secret out of his friends. He obtained a general idea of the way in which the murder had been committed and of the persons concerned in it. One of these was a frequenter of the queen’s chapel whom he knew by sight. He thought him to be a subordinate official there. If he went afterwards to the chapel to discover him he must have been disappointed, for the man occupied no office. He had failed to learn his name. It was only by accident that nearly two months later he met Prance and recognised him as the man he wanted. As he had no knowledge himself of the murder and could not profess to have been present at it, he devised the story that he had been shewn the body as it lay in a room in Somerset House on the night of October 14. At this point he introduced the name of Samuel Atkins. Le Fevre and Walsh had in the meantime disappeared, and Bedloe was left without any fish in his net. Doubtless the fact that Charles Atkins was his fellow-lodger suggested the idea of implicating Pepys’ clerk.