The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries (12 page)

Yet his position was assured. Robert, frankly, had neither the brains nor the will to wade through interminable papers, and having been raised to the role of Privy Councillor now sent various
secret documents to Overbury for him to look over first. Yet this very power was making Thomas unpopular in certain quarters. And one quarter was extremely dangerous. The King himself had conceived
a violent dislike of his favourite’s best friend, a dislike which he barely bothered to conceal.

“I am deep in love,” said the Countess of Essex, sighing.

“I am sure you are, my dear,” replied Mrs Turner, wishing she were being paid a guinea for every time she had heard that remark.

“Yet I fear the situation,” Frances continued. “If my husband should discover my association he would wreak havoc.”

“But he is not a husband in the true sense of the word. Is he?” she added, a trifle uncertainly.

“Most certainly not,” Frances replied roundly. “You know I hate the sight of him. And now I love Robert I could not bear to sleep with another man.”

“But surely you and Carr have not . . .”

Anne Turner paused delicately and the Countess blushed. “No, not yet. But I fear – what am I saying? – I mean I hope that it won’t be too long. That is why, my dear, I
want you to take me to your Cunning Man. He has a fearsome reputation in dealing with matrimonial matters.”

Mrs Turner nodded her blonde head. “He certainly has. He also has a reputation for taking his clients to bed.” She laughed, a little nervously.

“Well, he won’t get anywhere with me,” Frances answered with asperity. And in that moment Anne saw her determination, her ruthlessness in achieving what she wanted regardless
of the cost.

In this way Frances was introduced to Simon Forman, a man who combined the art of medicine with that of magic. An astrologer, a clairvoyant, and most of all a sympathetic listener, she begged
him to make Robert Carr love her passionately and at the same time render her husband totally incapable in the bed-chamber. She also asked, though this in the greatest secrecy, that the Earl of
Essex should die, thus leaving her free to marry again should she so desire.

Then, in the following spring, while still married to the lugubrious Earl, she and Robert met in secret at his house in London. She arrived by coach, heavily veiled, and was immediately shown
into the salon. Awaiting her, in a frenzy of love, was the young nobleman, gorgeously attired as was customary but today not caring how he looked, determined, as he was, to get her upstairs to see
his wonderful bed.

As soon as the servants had left the room he started to kiss her, wildly and voluptuously, knowing that she would weaken under such a barrage.

“Sweetheart,” he said, close to her ear. “Oh, my darling, I want you so badly.”

“But . . .” Frances protested half-heartedly.

“But what?”

“I am still married.”

“To that miserable fool. To hell with him.”

Robert was more aroused than he had ever been before. All his life he had found men more attractive than women but now he was in the throes of a desire so strong that it was barely containable.
Turning Frances round he headed purposefully for the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked him

“There’s only one place for us to go. To the bedroom.”

“Oh, Robert, I’m afraid.”

“So am I,” he answered truthfully, making her laugh.

But once inside his bedchamber, the door locked safely behind them, she stared in wonderment at his beautiful bed.

“Oh, God’s truth,” she exclaimed. “I have never seen anything so glorious.”

“Do you refer to me or my bed?” he asked, half seriously.

She moved round to face him. “Both,” she said.

Afterwards, when they lay entwined, naked as on the day of their birth, she shuddered a little.

“What’s the matter? Did I hurt you?”

“A bit. But it was worth every second.”

“You belong to me now, Frances Essex.”

“Don’t call me by that name. I hate it. Call me Howard.”

“But the Howards hate me,” said Robert ruefully.

“One day they won’t.”

“It will take a magic spell to make them change their minds.”

“Well, who knows, that might even happen.”

Overbury was beside himself with anger. He was positive that his friend was deeply besotted with the wretched Howard woman, despite all his warnings of dire peril if Robert
continued to associate with her.

“Abandon the bitch now,” had become his war cry.

But he misinterpreted the situation. Robert had for the first time in his life fallen deeply in love – physically, mentally, and every other way. He now had one goal and that was to marry
Frances as soon as she could obtain a divorce.

Things came to a head between the two men in the following March. Returning to his rooms in Whitehall in the small hours, having spent the evening in the embrace of Frances, Robert was horrified
to find Overbury pacing up and down in the Privy Gallery through which he had to pass.

“Are you still here?” he asked angrily.

“Am I here? Where have you been?”

Brushing him aside, Carr went on his way only to have Overbury shout at him, “Will you never leave the company of that base woman?”

“I haven’t seen her,” muttered Robert.

“It is too manifest,” Thomas screamed at him.

Carr wheeled about, his face livid, but Overbury was in full spate. “The King has bestowed great honours and gifts upon you and you overthrow yourself and all your fortunes in the company
of that base woman. As you clearly intend to ruinate yourself I think it best if I have nothing further to do with you.”

“So be it,” growled Robert.

But Thomas was not done yet. “If you would kindly pay me the
£
1,500 you owe me then our obligations to one another are at an end. You must stand as you can, and I shall shift
for myself. Good night to you.” And he stormed off in a towering rage.

“Prick,” yelled Robert at his departing back.

“The man is dangerous,” said Frances when told of the incident next day.

“No, darling. Difficult perhaps, but not actually menacing.”

“He might try and stop my suit for nullity going through.”

“On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that you and I committed adultery, a fact which he knows well.”

“It would be his word against ours.”

“He would dig up other witnesses from somewhere.”

Furthermore, thought Robert, Thomas Overbury has been thwarted in his love for me and will never forgive Frances as long as he lives. While Frances, unaware of what her lover was thinking,
considered the fact that Thomas might yet reassert his power over Robert and send her packing.

“It would be better for all of us if the man could be spirited away,” said Carr quietly.

“I could try and get someone to murder him,” Frances remarked brightly.

Robert Carr, Viscount Rochford, merely laughed, thinking that she spoke in jest. But actually the Countess of Essex was in earnest, even going so far as to approach Sir David Wood – a
Scotsman with a grudge against Overbury. Unfortunately he refused point blank, saying, “I might be accounted a great fool, Madam, if upon a woman’s word I should go to
Tyburn.”

In the end it was the King himself who provided the solution. He decided that Overbury was to be offered an ambassadorship abroad, thus removing him and his potential for making trouble, yet at
the same time treating him very fairly, for to be created ambassador was considered a good promotion.

Strangely, Overbury decided to be defiant. He believed that if he went overseas he would fade into obscurity. His prospects in England were far better, he argued. In view of the King’s
dislike of him and the fact that Carr had fallen out with him, this was very odd reasoning, to say the least. Yet Thomas would not budge, probably thinking that Carr was behind it all and wanted
him out of the way. The possibility of blackmailing Robert – a difficult thing to do from a distance – had also crossed his mind.

King James was thrown into an almost uncontrollable rage by Thomas Overbury’s contemptuous refusal of his offer.

“How dare that arrogant upstart treat me with such derision, Carr? You know I did this for you and I thought it a brave way of saving Overbury’s face. And now the poxy pillcock has
turned down my offer. I’ll have him for this, mark my words.”

The spittle was running down from the King’s mouth, a sign that he was labouring under some great emotion. Robert, not so keen these days on giving his Majesty whorish looks and
flirtatious glances, felt genuinely alarmed. Yet alongside this alarm there rose a ray of hope.

“What do you mean, Sire?”

“I’ll call him before the Council and then send him to the Tower. I’ll teach him to treat me with disrespect.”

Robert was so overcome that he had to sit down suddenly, despite the King being present. So their problem was going to be solved for them. Overbury was to be condemned to imprisonment.

James looked at him from a little eye. “And what do you have to say to that, eh, my Carr?”

“I say good riddance.”

“I think it well if you take to your bed for a few days, Robert. And when the news does come to you, plead ignorance.”

“I will, Sire, never fear.” And Carr kissed the royal hand more fervently that he had done for the last several months.

At long last Frances’s marriage was declared null and void. But what a terrible time she had had to endure in order to obtain her objective. The entire Howard clan had
been thrown into a panic when the Court of Commissioners had insisted that she be investigated by midwives and ladies of rank to see whether she was “virgo intacta”. The fact that she
was having an affair with Carr was common knowledge among the family so they had substituted another girl – very young and heavily veiled – to undergo the examination. However the head
of the commissioners, Archbishop Abbot, had expressed doubt about the proceedings, but once again the King had intervened. He had issued an order that each commissioner was to vote whether he was
for or against the annulment without stating his reasons. Seven to five voted in favour of the Countess’s marriage being annulled.

The populace at large were vaguely amused by it all and some wit wrote a ditty which went into common circulation:

Seventeen days after Thomas Overbury was admitted to the Tower, the Governor, Sir William Wade, was dismissed and Sir Gervase Elwes was appointed in his place. Behind this
extraordinary turn of events lay the hand of the Earl of Northampton, great-uncle to Frances and himself very attracted to Robert Carr. No sooner had this happened than Richard Weston, a shady
character who had once worked for Mrs Anne Turner and who had latterly helped Frances and Robert to meet in secret places, was appointed as Thomas’s gaoler.

Shortly after this, Mrs Turner sent for Weston to come to Whitehall to meet the Countess of Essex, as she still then was. She asked him to give Overbury “a water”, insisting that
Weston did not take it himself. He suspected at once it was poison but on his way to administer it he was stopped by Sir Gervase Elwes. Weston was then approached by a strange man called Franklin
in the White Lion on Tower Hill, who enquired about Overbury’s health. Weston told him that the man was far from well and had to have enemas regularly. Franklin immediately suggested that a
strange apothecary would come and give him a poisoned glister, or enema. Weston promptly reported the matter to Sir Gervase.

Right from the start of his imprisonment, Thomas had been writing to Robert in letters that showed he had no conception of how deeply wounded Carr had been by his references to Frances. Instead
he spoke blithely of plans to get him out of the Tower, most of them saying how sick he was, indeed fit to expire. In a welter of self-deception, he begged Carr to say that he – Robert
– would die of a broken heart if Thomas were not released. In other letters still he tried to manage Carr’s affairs, just as he once had long ago. But his greatest mistake was to refer
to Frances as a “catopard”; a derogatory term that he had used about her when Robert merely regarded the girl as a plaything.

Meanwhile a steady stream of tarts and jellies had been arriving at the Tower, purporting to come from Robert. But, shortly, other foodstuffs arrived, from the Countess of Essex. Elwes kept
these particular tarts, which were a bright green in shade, in the Tower kitchen and noted that after a day or two they had turned black and foul. While the jellies, left standing, grew fur on
them. Then came the day when she sent another batch of emerald green tarts, this time accompanied by a letter. In it she insisted that Sir Gervase should not allow his wife or children to taste the
tarts or jelly, and that they were to be given to Thomas Overbury. “Do this at night and all will be well,” she concluded.

That evening, lying next to Robert in the great and beautiful bed, she whispered, “Darling, why do you write to Overbury? Surely you must hate him as much as I do.”

There was a silence, so profound that she thought her lover must have dropped off to sleep, but eventually he spoke in the darkness.

“No, I don’t hate him. I just wish he weren’t such an arrogant bullying creature. I truly hoped that being in prison would make him see sense and that he would swear allegiance
to your family. But he continues to write in his old vein; ordering me about and . . .”

His voice died away.

“Insulting me?” asked Frances.

Carr propped himself up on one elbow. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you meant it. Oh, sweetheart, I fear that fellow. I fear his influence even from the heart of the Tower.”