Alms for Oblivion (19 page)

Now let’s change parts. Handy-dandy. I will step out of the murderer’s shoes and back into those of N. Revill but only for a moment. Now I will put myself in Peter’s place,
take up his role on that afternoon, walking home down the fog-bound street, as I might actually have been walking home myself. I sense someone slip through the door behind me, I spin round to
confront him, I say “What . . .?” etc . . . or, in the alternative scene, I will go downstairs, summoned by a rap at that same door, and, opening it, experience a terrible blow in the
chest.

For some reason it was easier for me to envisage myself in the former role, that of the murderer, than as his victim. It is more satisfying to play the villain than the victim.

Now I have arrived, reluctantly, at the conclusion which I was so reluctant to leap at before. There’s no escape.

What if Peter had been killed in mistake for me?

Suppose that
Revill
was always the intended victim.

We looked alike. At least we had looked quite alike as boys. I remembered Peter’s father confusing me with his son on several occasions. True, we’d grown unalike, just as we’d
grown up and grown apart. But a stranger – if he’d been watching from a distance, in the fog, down a street, or if he’d come to the door of a dimly lit lobby – a stranger
might well have taken me for Peter Agate. Or taken Agate for Revill. Especially since Peter’s lodgings were actually mine. Master Revill the player lives in Dead Man’s Place. A tallish,
darkish-haired young man is seen turning in there, or he comes to the door in answer to a summons. What is more reasonable than to suppose that that man is the player?

Let’s kill him then . . .

My hands were shaking. I put my tankard slowly down on the table in the Goat & Monkey, and took several deep breaths. I was convinced that the scene had unrolled as I’d played it out
in my head. One of the scenes, anyway. It didn’t much matter whether Peter had been trailed in the street or whether he was already inside the house. The end was the same. The surprise, the
sudden attack, the bloody murder.

But whereas before I’d been unable to come up with a motive for Peter’s murder, things made a little more sense if
I
was the intended victim. This wasn’t
self-importance, the swollen belief that I was big enough to have earned myself many enemies. I’d lived in London for more than three years and Peter for just a few days. I had not set out to
cultivate enemies, although I’d inevitably incurred the displeasure of a few and the hatred of one or two. I thought of a certain steward in a house on the north bank of the Thames –
but as far as I knew he was safely dead.
²
I thought of that dangerous band which had surrounded the Earl of Essex.
³
But, once again, they were mostly dead or imprisoned. And my role in that affair was not widely known.

No, if I was looking for a solution now, it must lie within the confines of this story. And since I had already fingered young Lord and Lady Venner for the murder of Richard Milford, could I now
attach them for my murder – or rather for Peter Agate’s (but in mistake for me)?

But my brain was weary with so much thinking and speculating. It was enough for one evening. I drained the last few drops from my tankard, and left the Goat. The fog hung in tatters. Useless
threads of light could be discerned through the odd window. I groped my way through the streets to Dead Man’s Place as fast as possible. My feet slid over slick, dirty cobbles. I scarcely
bothered to keep to one side, away from the kennel in the centre where the muck slithered or stuck. I had more pressing concerns than filthy feet. Since I’d come to the conclusion – the
provisional conclusion – that someone wanted to kill me, my senses were sharpened, however dulled my brain was. In the open air, on the streets, that conclusion didn’t feel provisional
at all. Here was I, a victim, the prey-in-waiting. Out there was the villain, the hunter. And how many hunters! What a strange pack had run through my mind this evening – Tom Gally, that old
player Chesser, the rude brother and sister called Venner. I had accused them all.

The world was a dangerous place, full of murderers and would-be murderers. If the fog was a blanket concealing me from any attacker, it was also a cloak hiding him or her from me.

But I reached my house safely. I climbed the stairs, shut my door fast, crept into bed, pulled my fusty blanket up about my ears and fell asleep immediately.

T
wo odd things happened the next day before I managed to visit Paul’s Yard in the hope of requesting from the bookseller a copy of Richard
Milford’s
The World’s Diseas’d
. The first thing was quite minor or appeared so at the time.

My fears of the previous night hadn’t gone away but they were diminished in the foggy daylight and I set off for the playhouse in calmer spirits.

I’d no sooner arrived at the Globe – another rehearsal, life goes on, the show never stops – than I was pounced on by the tire-man.

“Your sleeve, Nicholas, what happened to it?”

For answer I held up my arm.

“Looks all right to me.”

“I mean your Troilus sleeve. The brocade one with the gold figures.”

Bartholomew Ridd, the tire-man, was a fussy, irritating little individual. Like all those who have charge of costumes for stage plays he behaved as though the real function of the playhouse was
to show off his fine gear. Players were merely the frames from which clothes were hung. Now, it was true that a player would have to play for many weeks, even for months in the case of a
‘king’ or a ‘queen’, to earn the cost of the costume he wore. It was also true that some of our audience – and not just the women – paid more attention to what
we were wearing than to what we were saying or doing. Costumes count.

None of this, however, made any difference to the fact that Bartholomew Ridd was a fussy, irritating little individual. He would have been fussy, & cetera, if he’d been a vagrant
– or the Queen of England. Sometimes Ridd behaved like the Queen of England. Imperious and snappish. And I should know. I met her once.

“You mean the sleeve I gave to Cressida as a love-token?”

“Of course that’s what I mean. What’s happened to it?”

“Have you asked Peter Pearce? I gave it to the boy-player. I had to give it to him. It’s in the play.”

The memory of that painful moment in the Middle Temple banqueting-hall returned.
Wear this sleeve.
There I had stood, as if turned to stone, while Peter waited for me to hand over the
rich gold token in exchange for a glove.

“Of course I’ve asked him,” said Batholomew Ridd.

“You’ve asked him, and what does Peter say?” I said carefully.

“He doesn’t know what happened to it.”

“You searched the tire-house at Middle Temple?”

“Call that a tire-house! It was no more than a poky little space behind the hall-screen. No one appreciates the worth of my costumes. They require proper housing.”

“Well then.”

“Well then, Nicholas. It’s all very well for you to say ‘Well then’. You are aware that the sleeve was part of your costume . . .”

“My responsibility, you mean.”

“Of course that’s what I mean.”

Ridd was in the right, and not only from a tire-man’s limited point of view. From the instant we put the costumes on to the instant we put them off – donning and doffing, as it was
called – they were our responsibility. It didn’t matter that we might be required by the script to give away bits of clothing. It was up to us to get those bits back afterwards and
return them unscathed to the tire-house. I suppose that I’d got a bit distracted in the unusual circumstances of the
Troilus and Cressida
performance. A different venue, the makeshift
tire-house, the strange fit of forgetfulness which had overcome me during the play when I was meant to hand over the sleeve to Cressida, the heat and the drinking and talking afterwards. But none
of this was really an excuse, and I knew it. I should have looked after my costume better. Nevertheless I felt I should also defend myself against Ridd’s niggling.

“I am sorry that I had to unfasten the sleeve and give it away. It’s in the play.”

“Oh the play, the play! That’s an excuse for anything these days. I must have a word with Master William Shakespeare and get him to stop his characters dismantling their costumes in
this fashion. Costumes are not playthings.”

“I thought that’s exactly what they were – play things.”

“Very funny, Nicholas. You’ll cut yourself with that tongue of yours one of these days.”

“I’m beginning to wish now that I’d cut my arm off rather than lose the sleeve.”

“The trouble with you players,” said Ridd, “is that you can’t see beyond the ends of your own noses.”

“I am truly sorry, Bartholomew.”

“You will be sorry when I’ve had a word with Richard Burbage. That was a valuable costume and it’s not much good with one arm, is it? You may find your wages docked to pay for
a new sleeve.”

And Bartholmew Ridd stalked off. I couldn’t be that angry with Ridd, although he was a fussy little & cetera, because the fault lay with me. I’d have a word with Peter Pearce
about the sleeve but it was I who should have retrieved the wretched thing after the performance. If Burbage decided to dock my pay until I’d earned enough sleeve-money, well then, I’d
just have to grin and bear it. How costly was a gold-figured brocade sleeve anyway?

Never mind that. I had more pressing considerations on my mind. Such as: was I about to be indicted for murder by Alan Talbot, the Middlesex coroner? Such as: was Nicholas Revill the real,
intended target of Peter Agate’s killer?

By the middle of the day I’d more or less argued myself out of the second consideration, and gone back to the idea that the intended target of Peter’s killer had been, all along,
Peter himself. In truth, all this thinking and speculation tended to show one thing only: that I had no idea what was going on.

On a different track, investigating a different mystery, that of Richard Milford’s murder, I crossed the river to Paul’s Wharf. I chose the ferry. Alan Talbot’s suggestion that
I, a mere player, didn’t have the money to pay for a water crossing still rankled slightly. I’d show him. I’d take the ferry whenever I wanted to. But I ought to have walked
across. The day, which had begun not too badly (considering the murders which were springing up around my heels), now showed what it really had in store for me. That little altercation with
Bartholomew Ridd had merely been the first course.

The ferryman took me for an out-of-towner who could easily be rooked, which I wasn’t, and I took him for a cheating bastard, which he was, and we exchanged words. After the words we nearly
came to blows at the foot of the steps on the far side, regardless of the arrival of two or three other ferries. The disembarking passengers hardly gave us a glance. Our quarrel may have had
entertainment value but it was too cold and misty and miserable to stop and stare. We were squaring up opposite each other and I had half an eye out for the boatman’s fellows pitching in to
help him out. Then, luckily, several potential customers materialized through the fog on the top of the wharf. My bellicose friend had to choose between the pleasure of beating up a player or
allowing the others to snatch all the fares. It wasn’t easy for him. Punches or pennies? Taking advantage of his indecision, I tossed my single penny – and not the two which he’d
demanded – on to the slimy stone at his feet and quickly ascended the steps.

I set off in the direction of Paul’s Yard and Nicholson the printer and bookseller. The ground rises quite sharply from the river bank at this point. There is a large open area to the east
of Burleigh House and a path leading across it, or rather a wide indentation worn in the ground by the comings and goings of countless feet. Then you must pass through a narrow alley between
buildings before coming out into Thames Street, the very thoroughfare where Richard and Lucy Milford lodged and where Richard had been so treacherously surprised two nights before. I knew their
house, had visited there once or twice. It crossed my mind to call on the new widow but prudence prevailed. I was already implicated in one unlawful killing. I did not want to get involved with
another, however distantly.
Then why are you setting off to see Benjamin Nicholson about Milford’s play?
a voice in my head whispered. I had no answer to that.

I was wrapped up in these thoughts but even so I heard someone calling out some words. After a time I became aware that these words were “Look out!” And then again “Look
out!” I had the leisure to wonder who the warning was directed at. I peered towards the mouth of the passage which leads to Thames Street. I couldn’t see the entrance, hardly surprising
since everything was obscured and mist-wrapped. But I did see a darker shape take sudden definition in front of me. And grow darker and larger. Like a great door opening up in the fog. There was a
confused rattling and rumbling and then that repeated shout riding over the noise.

“Look out below!”

I flung myself sideways to the ground, and felt the wind of the cart – horseless but heavily freighted – as it rushed past my heels. Another couple of feet to the left and the iron
rims of the wheels would have crushed my leg. A couple more feet and my earthly term would have been over. I lay hugging the sloping ground, safe for the instant. Somewhere over my shoulder the
loaded cart proceeded on its downward path. I prayed that no one else was in the way. The rumbling and grinding seemed to last for a little eternity and then, abruptly, ceased. Seconds later there
were a couple of resonant thumps.

“Man, are you well?”

I felt the warm breath of my rescuer on my face as he bent over me. He was panting. The voice was familiar. I twisted around and sat up, ready with a thousand thanks for his warnings. Then my
mouth must have fallen open. Looking at me through his old rheumy eyes was Chesser, the chalk-coloured face even paler than the surrounding air. The aged player looked as surprised as I felt.