Alms for Oblivion (23 page)

“Nevertheless you saw her often?”

“What I meant was that I never paid her. We were friends.”

“But you hadn’t seen her for a long time?”

“If what you’re trying to establish, Master Talbot, is that we had a falling-out, then I’ll save you the trouble. Yes, we had a disagreement of sorts.”

“Over your other friend Peter Agate, your dead friend?”

“No, not him.”

“Someone else?”

“Possibly.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Last time we met, Nicholas, you said that being jealous over a whore was like being resentful of the wind for brushing your enemy’s face as well as your own.”

In other circumstances I might have been flattered that Master Talbot had remembered my words so clearly. Now it gave me no pleasure.

“A speech which you called poetical,” I said. “I am embarrassed to recall it.”

“Because it wasn’t true?”

“Nell was more than a whore, to me. I should not have spoken of her so. I
was
jealous, I was resentful. A little resentful.”

Just as I’d earlier surprised myself by grinning at Talbot’s comment about being hanged straightaway, so I was taken aback to hear myself utter words about jealousy and resentment.
It might perhaps have been politic to pretend that Nell had meant nothing to me, and so diminished my motive for killing her. But, in the face of Talbot’s cold penetrating gaze, I fell back
on honesty. As well, something inside me urged openness – not only with the coroner but with myself. I had parted from Nell, the last time I’d seen her, in a bad mood. I wished
we’d at least had the chance to make up before her death. We hadn’t, and I would not now pay off her memory by suggesting that I had ever been indifferent towards her.

I wiped away some water which had gathered in the corner of an eye. Talbot looked steadily at me. I knew what he was thinking,
A murderer may weep too over what he has done
. Or perhaps,
more cynically, he thought that I was a good actor. (I was a good actor.)

“This figure which you say you passed in the passage at Holland’s Leaguer, tell me more about him.”

Ever since that terrible afternoon, I had rehearsed the moments leading up to my discovery of her body. Passing between the twin gateposts of the flesh and the ugly male doorkeeper beyond,
climbing the stairs to Nell’s floor, walking along the approach to her crib. The trouble was that I’d been so preoccupied with my thoughts that I’d hardly noticed my
surroundings.

“Someone brushed past me, that’s all. Knocked against me.”

“Man or woman?”

“A man by his bulk and tread. Yes, definitely a man.”

“You did not look directly at him?”

“No. He seemed to be all muffled up. I was thinking of other things. And he was gone before I’d got my wits about me.”

“He must have come from one of the other whores.”

“Perhaps. Yet I don’t remember hearing any words spoken or any door closing.”

“You’ve just said that you were thinking of other things.”

“Even so . . . ”

I paused. Something was hovering at the edge of my memory. I hadn’t seen what the man looked like or what he was wearing, I hadn’t heard him say anything, but . . .

“What is it, Nicholas?”

“This man had a – a smell.”

“Smell?”

“A rank smell. Like a fox’s.”

“Then we shall have to set the hounds on him,” said Talbot jocularly. “Let us return to more material considerations.”

“Have you questioned the gateposts, the doorkeepers I mean?” I said. “Those women could testify about the time I arrived at Holland’s Leaguer.”

“They have been questioned. They do not tell the time by the clock but by the number of customers entering between them.”

“Did they see any men leave?”

“They see men leave constantly.”

“I’m sorry, Master Talbot. It was a foolish question.”

“Besides,” said the coroner, “do you not know that such a place must have many irregular exits, you with all your knowledge of stews?”

I thought of all the floor-traps, sliding windows and counterfeit panels which dotted Holland’s Leaguer. Nell had shown me a few and I guessed at the existence of dozens of others. A
gentleman needs to be able to make a quick disappearance from a brothel.

“Another point, Master Revill. Do you suppose that the occupants of a house of ill-repute would make good witnesses – about anything?”

“You’d be surprised what they know about humankind.”

“No doubt,”said Talbot. “But they’re not usually given much credit in a court of law. You will have to look for help elsewhere.”

“I am indifferent to my fate,” I said.

“There is still the question of Peter Agate’s death unresolved.”

“I have it hanging over me,” I said.

“Is that an admission?”

“No, but I cannot forget finding his body. The blood everywhere.”

“You are making a habit of finding bodies.”

“Call it a vice rather.”

“Call it what you like,” said the coroner, “justice will still be done.”

I shrugged.

“Would you still be so indifferent,” persisted Talbot, “if I said that you have also come under suspicion in the matter of Richard Milford, the murdered playwright?”

“What!”

“It is reported that you were seen in close converse with his wife in Middle Temple on the night of his death . . .”

I thought of Pye and Jute and those other fledgling lawyers. No doubt they’d been happy enough to go sneaking to Talbot.

“That doesn’t make me his killer!”

“ . . . and that there was talk between you and Mistress Milford, talk about a murdered man.”

I was dumbfounded. I could hardly speak. Or rather there was so much to say, I hardly knew where to begin. Talbot looked pleased to have finally roused me.

“Talk to her, go on,” I said, “I ask you to talk to her. Or let her talk to you, at you. Maybe you can make sense of her maunderings. I didn’t know what she was talking
about.”

“Your outrage is less plausible than your regret,” said Talbot. His earlier, almost paternal manner had disappeared. In the midst of my distraction I wondered if it had been a device
to draw me out.

“Anyway,” I said, “on the night of Richard Milford’s death I had drunk myself into insensibility.”

“So the story goes.”

“It’s a true story.”

“Drunkenness is easy to feign, especially for a player.”

“I may not be able to contradict you in much else, Master Talbot, but at least I can in that regard. No, drunkenness is not easy to play. Only the laity, I mean untheatrical, persons would
think so.”

I spoke with more force than I’d intended. It was a footling point but it was the only area in which I could counter anything he’d said.

“I defer to your experience of drunkenness, both real and feigned, Master Revill. But you are accused, or likely to be accused, of rather more than drunkenness. Three unlawful killings to
be precise.”

“Come one, come all,” I said, sinking my head in my hands and fearing now that everything was lost, well and truly lost. My earlier state, when I’d believed myself to be accused
of one or (at most) two murders, had almost been happiness compared to this. If before I’d been numb, now I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or rage.

Here sat or slumped Revill. Nicholas Revill, the parson’s son and player – and monster. Yes, monster; mere murderer wasn’t bad enough any longer. Three violent deaths were
being laid at my door. Give me the noose now. Fling it over that timber up there. I will clamber up on the chair, hook the rope about my neck and hurl myself into space. What does it matter that I
risk eternal damnation by self-slaughter? Eternal damnation is no more than I deserve.

“Well now,” said Talbot, in an apparent return to his more conciliatory manner. “Look up, Nicholas. You do not have three necks. One charge would suffice.”

I did look up. Was he trying to comfort me? Or rub salt into my wounds? I could not tell.

“Why gild the lily then?” I said. “If one charge will take me to Tyburn.”

“Justice must be served. The truth will out, all of it.”

His cold stare fixed me and his palms pressed down on the table between us. There was a kind of fervour in him now. I judged that Talbot must be very confident of himself for, in his eyes, he was
alone with a man who had despatched three other human beings, yet he had been happy to leave the gaolers outside the door while he interviewed me. Perhaps it was simply that he knew his man. I
wasn’t going to spring up and attack him. The only person I might have attacked was myself.

The coroner now called for the gaolers and those hulking fellows entered the room. There is a pair of giant wooden figures set up at the London Guildhall and brought out for processions from
time to time. Going by the names of Gog and Magog, they are among the tutelary deities of the city. Perhaps they are meant to scare off our enemies by the ugliness of their expressions as well as
by their size for I’ve never seen more displeasing faces in effigy. But real life is always able to outstrip art, and my two gaolers were more than a match for the Guildhall giants both in
point of size and ugliness. So, in my mind, I had baptized the pair Gog and Magog. I’d been pleased that my feeble spirits could rally to even this shallow show of wit. But there was nothing
really amusing about them – or about my situation. I was still dumbfounded by Talbot’s multiple accusations.

Now the giant gaolers came to stand on either side of my chair.

“Return Master Revill to the Counter prison,” said Talbot. “Look to him carefully or you will answer to me.”

These men didn’t talk. Rather they made gurgling sounds like boggy water disappearing down a hole in the ground. In time one could doubtless have learnt their tongue, but life is short
(mine seemed especially likely to be short at this moment) and a man ought to devote his leisure to pleasure or, failing that, to some worthwhile activity. Learning how to interpret the gurgles
made by a gaoler did not seem to me a good use of my remaining days on this earth.

In response to the coroner’s instructions, Gog gurgled and Magog gargled, but in a deferential fashion. And Talbot appeared to understand them.

“You will be recalled for more questions, Nicholas Revill. I shall see you again.”

I nodded, having run out of words.

Talbot nodded back at me, then at the gaolers. Obediently, I took my place between them and, together, we left the coroner’s house. Once out on the street, it might have occurred to me to
make a run for it. Or it might have occurred to you perhaps. A couple of considerations held me back. One was the cold amazement which I was suffering under and which weighed me down more
effectively than any shackles would have done. To be unjustly accused of murder – and of not one, not two, but three killings – may cause any man to question the workings of providence.
But before that happens it turns him almost to stone. I was barely able to put one foot in front of the other, let alone to run. The second consideration was the size and strength of my escort. The
giants would be on me in a trice. They carried staffs as a badge of office and these were no trumpery wands but long and heavy enough to inflict damage.

I might have paid for my escape in a different sense, a monetary sense. Even in my brief time in gaol I’d discovered how money counted inside. But I had almost nothing left now – so
rapacious were my gaolers – certainly not enough to bribe Gog and his brother. And besides I judged that the giant pair, instructed by Talbot to take good care of their charge, were likely to
be more in awe of the coroner than they were interested in pecuniary gain.

So we traversed the familiar streets of Southwark until we reached our goal, which was my gaol. I mostly kept my head down and don’t know whether anyone recognized me, but it’s
likely they did. I say ‘my gaol’ advisedly for this South-wark borough has almost enough prisons, wards and confines to accommodate each of its citizens separately, so wicked are we
south Londoners. There’s the Clink, there’s the Marshalsea, there’s the King’s Bench and White Lion, & cetera . . . and then there’s the Counter. There are other
Counters on the other side of the river but this is the South-wark prison of that name.

I had been taken here after being apprehended at Holland’s Leaguer in the room where Nell’s body lay. The Cyclops stood guard while Nell’s friend Jenny ran to get assistance.
But in truth I was not in a mind to run anywhere. I continued to kneel on the floor, clutching at the Troilus sleeve which had been the death of my friend.

Eventually Jenny returned with the headborough, Doggett, the one who’d been summoned in the aftermath of Peter Agate’s murder. She looked at me in horror – for she had been the
friend of my good friend, and knew me – and I shook my head but could not tell whether she understood my denial. As for the constable, if he was surprised to find me once more in the presence
of a corpse he didn’t show it. He pronounced the scene unwholesome, foul and villainous, and this time made a formal arrest. Doggett and the Cyclops and a couple more of the brothel
bully-boys then ushered me off. I moved as if in a dream. The Cyclops enjoyed manhandling me. The red silken patch over his eye seemed to glisten. I might have forgiven him if he was doing it
because of what had happened with Nell. But he was doing it because he liked it.

We were headed for the Counter. It is a formidable edifice, this prison, although not for the obvious reasons. The building was once St Margaret’s church but many years ago it was given
over, or rather sold and defaced, to temporal purposes. I’d walked past it many times (it is near the Tabard Inn) without giving it a second thought. There’s an odd appropriateness to a
church being turned into a prison, at least in one aspect. In a place where men were once exhorted to leave their sins they are now punished for not doing so.

Doggett the headborough rapped on the double doors which had formerly admitted worshippers. After some time, we were let in by a lantern-jawed, red-eyed fellow who was plainly irritated at
having to quit, even for an instant, the card game he was enjoying with a fellow gaoler. While he cast his eyes over the five of us – Doggett, Revill, the silken-patched Cyclops and his two
companion brothel-creepers – the guard’s bloodshot gaze kept flicking back towards his associate, as if
he
was the real wrong-doer and was sure to cheat him at the cards. Then,
without a word, Lantern-jaw jerked his head towards a stout inner door and returned to his game. Both guards were sitting on stools either side of a chimney which filled the little room (probably
the former church porch) with heat and fug, augmented by pipe smoke. Between them was a chest, on top of which their greasy cards were laid together with two neat piles of coin. They showed no
curiosity about any of us.