An Honourable Murderer (32 page)

On the subject of chests: Mrs Buckle had a chest in her room. Was it red? I didn't know, never having seen her bedroom by daylight, never having been that interested in her furniture. What did Mrs Buckle's chest have to do with all this? Nothing. Leave her chest behind. But I would have liked to return to Mrs Buckle's chest, in another sense. My friend Blanche – no, my whore Blanche – she had a mole on her right breast. Perhaps Mrs Buckle had a mole too. That would be amusing, the wife of a parson and a French whore sharing moles. But I wouldn't know what Mrs Buckle had on her chest. I had not seen her in full daylight, not in that way.
Darkness is best
.

Then I thought of Master Bartholomew Ridd and what he'd said about the best way to remove bloodstains. Avoid fighting first of all. But if you do spill blood you should use milk, or salt and water to clean it up. If it's fresh, then you should spit on the stain. Spit works well. What had the laundrywoman used on the ‘cloak of Truth' as worn by Sir Philip Blake and Ben Jonson? She'd tried milk, but that hadn't worked. Nor had salt and water.

When I was little I had a toy which was made of some shiny wood. It was carved in the shape of an apple and was ingeniously constructed so that it came apart segment by segment. It was a simple matter for my childish fingers to pull the apple apart but much harder for those same fingers to put it back together again. Yet it would go together. I had watched my father reassemble the apple times without number, when I'd gone to him with teary eyes or a cross face. He was a patient man, with me at least. “There,” he'd say, placing it in my open palm, “there's nothing to it.” And it was true, there was nothing to it when he was the one who was doing it. But as soon as I'd taken the apple apart once more, I could not for the life of me recall how it all slotted together. Then one day I managed to take the apple apart
and
put it back together, so I squirrelled it away in a chest and never got it out again.

The items that were floating about in my head were like the pieces of that apple. They should fit together, should fit perfectly, but somehow I could not quite do it.

I recalled Giles Cass's words about Sir Philip Blake. That he'd been lucky to die when he did, considering that the beagle, Secretary Cecil, was on his tail for plotting against the Spanish peace, therefore for being on Raleigh's side. Sir Walter Raleigh . . . who'd narrowly avoided that dreadful fate of hanging, drawing and quartering . . . hanging, and while still alive – though barely – having bloody hands thrust into his entrails . . .

I thought too of Lady Jane Blake's hasty remarriage to a country cousin. A lucky man perhaps. To be marrying into all that wealth, a country house far away and a mansion close at hand on the Strand. To be marrying a woman who was an apothecary's daughter and who'd recently played Plenty in a royal masque. She'd come up in the world, had Lady Blake. All that flesh, a nice prospect for someone. I wondered whether the country cousin would be brought up to town to see London, for the first time perhaps. Or maybe he'd already seen the city . . .

Some pieces of the mystery – some pieces of the apple – seemed to come together inside my head and for a moment I thought I had it. Then it slipped from my grasp.

I wasn't really asleep all this time while I was sitting on top of the Globe for I suddenly heard a noise within the depths of the building. Abel heard it too, a kind of thud. He tensed and sat up. In the fading light we waited for another sound but none came.

After a moment Abel said, “I have been wondering, Nick.”

I braced myself for a bitter comment or at least a critical one. How I was all wrong, how this was a waste of effort.

“Do you think they'll ever build another spire on Paul's?”

Abel gestured across the river. The great church was almost opposite us, a little to our left. Its outline bulked larger and grander than any other building on the far side. Once, years ago at the start of Elizabeth's reign, St Paul's possessed the tallest spire of all the London churches. But it was struck by lightning and burned down. It had never been replaced although there was talk of it from time to time.

“I don't know,” I said.

“It would be a fine thing,” said Abel.

“A fine thing,” I repeated.

And that seemed to bring this futile evening to a close. There was no point in lingering up here on the roof of the Globe any longer. The air was turning chilly with more than a hint of autumn in it. No one was going to come now. My scheme wasn't so much madcap as just plain foolish. Time to get out of the playhouse, and return here in the proper form for tomorrow morning's rehearsal of Barton's
Melancholy Man
. To return not as trespassers but players. Not as arrogant finders-out of truth but as humble honest craftsmen.

Abel stood up and stretched. I moved away from the cabin and along the walkway towards the door into the upper gallery. Then we heard it.

T
here was no doubt about it this time. There were footsteps coming up the gallery stairs. More than one set of footsteps. My first thought was that they must belong to a couple of the seniors. They'd found out about my plans and were coming to deal with me. It was no more than I deserved. I'd trespassed on my own workplace, I'd stolen keys (and would have stolen a tire-room costume if I could have laid my hands on it), I'd written slanderous letters, I'd inveigled an innocent player into participating in a foolish scheme. I had brought the King's Men into disrepute. I would be asked to leave the Company straightaway. No more than I deserved.

All this passed through my mind in a flash. The footsteps drew nearer. In a moment the door which led from the topmost gallery on to the roof would be opened. Abel grabbed my arm and pulled me back. Without saying a word, we slipped around to the far side of the hut, the side that faced towards the river, and crouched against the wall. We'd be out of sight of anyone making a cursory inspection from the doorway. Maybe we could get away with it.

We heard the gallery door opening and the tread of feet as people – only two of them by the sound of it – emerged into the open. It was more than half-dark by now. There was the glimmer of lamplight from round the corner of our hiding place. This suggested that whoever was up here on the roof felt little need to conceal themselves. Unlike us, they were entitled to be here. The tables were turned. We'd been intending to trap a murderer. Now it was Abel and I who were trapped and trying to hide, most likely from our seniors. I waited for a shout, a summons. But nobody spoke, nobody said a thing, not even in a whisper.

This was strange, that nobody was speaking at all. After an age had gone by, I motioned to Abel to stay where he was and crept forward very slowly on all fours until I reached the corner of the roughcast wall of the hut. Like a wary tortoise I peered round the edge. There were two men standing at the other end of the walkway. They had a lantern with them but it was placed on the rush-strewn ground so that I glimpsed only their feet. They had their backs to me and were looking towards the door which gave on to the gallery passage. The door was still open.

I retreated behind the shelter of the wall and signed to Abel that there were a couple of them. He cupped his hand and whispered in my ear, “Burbage? Shakespeare?” I shook my head. Like me, he'd assumed that anyone on the roof must be here legitimately, and at this time of night that was most likely to be the shareholders. But the outlines I'd seen had not been those of Dick Burbage or WS or of anyone else that I recognized from the King's Men. Even so, I had an idea who the two were.

Then we heard more steps coming up the gallery stairs. Not one or two sets of steps but several. These were no shareholders come to rebuke us, and to throw me out of the Company. This was much more serious than the mere loss of my job. My heart was beating hard and a sweat broke out on me, despite the growing chill of the evening. I suddenly understood that my madcap scheme, far from failing, was about to become a great success. I understood some other things too. The pieces of the apple, which I'd been struggling to fit together, slotted into place without effort while I was paying attention to something quite different.
There's nothing to it
. I saw how the trick had been done, more or less.

I also understood that Abel's life and mine were in great danger. Our best, our only, chance of survival was to keep absolutely silent and still, and pray that our visitors would be satisfied with a glance around the roof. (I didn't think that they would be though. They'd been invited up here. Invited by an idiot.)

Now more people emerged from the gallery on to the wooden walkway. There was the shuffle and clump of feet, several pairs of feet, some light, some heavy. The oddest aspect of all this was that no word had yet been uttered. Abel grasped at my arm once more. I sensed his bewilderment and fear. I was fearful myself, but not bewildered, not really. It was small compensation but I could have told him what was happening – or at least could have told him why this little group was assembling on the roof of the Globe playhouse – except that to talk would be to reveal our presence.

But, although we hadn't been seen, our presence was already known. Or mine was at least.

“Master Revill,” came a voice. It was Jonathan Snell, the father, the engine-man.

“Nick, are you there?”

Now I recognized the sound of the son.

“It was wrong to cast you as Ignorance in that masque, you are much more ingenious, Nicholas,” said a woman. That was Maria More.

“You wrote a letter,” said the bluff tones of Bill Inman.

“Please come and talk to us, Master Revill,” said another man whose voice I also recognized.

Hiding was pointless. In a moment they would inspect the walkway which ran round the hut and they would discover Abel and me, crouching in fear of our lives. If I showed myself to them before that and caused a distraction, Abel might make his escape.

Again signalling to my friend that he should remain where he was, I stood up and walked round the corner.

“Here I am,” I said. “You want to talk?”

There was a cluster of individuals standing on the area of the roof between the upper gallery door and the entrance to the hut. They had at least three lamps between them which cast a good glow across the group and enabled me to identify them. I knew who I'd find up here anyway. I knew it all now, more or less.

There were both Jonathan Snells, the father and the son, the latter wearing his spectacles. They were the ones who'd arrived first on the playhouse roof. There was Lady Jane Blake, wrapped up well against the night-chill. Next to her was the elegant Maria More, still more the mistress than the mistress. There was honest, bluff Bill Inman. And standing next to him was that equally honest craftsman Ned Armitage and the lank-haired fellow from the Three Cranes yard, Tom Turner. Seven individuals altogether.

I'd been looking for one, at the most two. There were seven of them!

“Well,” said Jonathan Snell the older, “you have found us out.”

“I have now,” I said. I gazed up at the sky. The moon was at the edge of my vision.

Someone shivered with an intake of breath, Maria More I think.

“Let's go inside here,” I said, gesturing behind me. “It is more . . . private.”

Like a host ushering guests into his house, I showed the company inside the hut. It was not built for comfort, but it got us out of the night air. There were a couple of stools in here, as well as the
deus ex machina
chair. The lifting gear loomed in the shadows thrown by the light of the lanterns. The seven disposed themselves around the little room. There wasn't much space. I stood in the doorway, unsure whether this was to prevent any of them leaving or to give me the opportunity of escaping on my own account. I could be through the gallery door and halfway down the stairs before they set off in pursuit. I had the advantage of knowing the Globe's entrances and exits. But I owed it to Abel to let him leave first. Besides, I did not feel in imminent danger. Rather, it was these seven individuals who seemed to be expecting me to act.

“What do you want?” said Bill Inman. “Do you want money?”

“No,” I said. “That was just a device to get you here in the first place, the belief that I was after money.”

“You're alone?” said the older Snell.

“Quite alone,” I said, a little louder than necessary and for Abel's benefit.

“You have no magistrate concealed up here?” said Lady Jane.

“No magistrate, no authority, on my life,” I said.

“What
do
you want then?” said Snell, echoing Inman but with more emphasis.

“The truth,” I said.

There was no immediate answer to this ambitious demand. Then the younger Snell said, “I think that Nick deserves that at least. We can only lay the truth before him.”

To my surprise Maria More nodded assent at this and Tom Turner said simply, “Yes.”

“But you are already in possession of the truth,” said father Snell. “Or you think you are.”

“Oh, I am,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “The fact that you're all here shows that I am.”

I did not say that the truth had come to me only moments earlier. Instead I said, “But let me try it for size. You can put me right if I go wrong in the details.”

Nobody spoke. I drew breath and began my story.

“Everything seemed to stem from the death of Sir Philip Blake, although this strange business began before that. That death was supposed to be an accident. That was how it was meant to appear, a terrible accident. It was a very public event, witnessed by dozens of people in the audience chamber at Somerset House. And that's how it would have remained – as an accident – if it hadn't been for Jonathan Snell's sharp eyes, or his sharp spectacles perhaps. He spotted that the ropes holding up the chair on which Sir Philip was lowered had been partly cut through, in such a way that they'd sever altogether when the chair reached a certain point in its descent. The fact that the ropes had been cut so nicely suggested that whoever did it was familiar with weights and tensions, and so on.”