An Honourable Murderer (17 page)

A cool draught of air came funnelling up from the river. About halfway down Three Cranes Lane and on the left-hand side stood a house – more of a little warehouse – with an enclosed yard. I had passed by it a handful of times but never before been aware of the smell of fresh-cut wood which streamed over the wall like the scent of flowers from a garden. Now the wood smell seemed obvious, and I wondered how I could have missed it. There was a gate in the wall which was latched. I opened it.

This must be the right place. There were neatly stacked piles of timber in the yard together with a spoked object under a tarpaulin which had the outline, although smaller, of the windlass that I'd seen backstage in Somerset House. Two carts stood side by side in a corner. The cobbled yard sloped slightly, following the slant of the lane outside. At the top end was a kind of warehouse whose south-facing upper windows had been enlarged to let in more light. Above the windows were projecting beams with hooks which looked like curled, deformed hands. They would be employed in hoisting. I guessed that this place too had once been used for the storage and distribution of wine. The cobbles were stained dark purple in their crevices. Here, over the centuries, the dregs had been scraped out of empty wine barrels. Wine from France, maybe wine from Bordeaux, like Blanche of the Mitre.

I had a sense of trespassing. For some reason I didn't want to run into the Snells again. As far as I knew, father and son were still at Somerset House poring over the evidence of the ‘accident' or the ‘murder', call it what you will. Was there anybody in their workshop? I thought of calling out. I had my story ready if challenged, the one about the missing ring. I'd almost come to believe in it myself.

I walked up the yard and peered through the ground-floor windows. The windows were small and some were unglazed. This floor was a single open space and evidently used for storage and general jumble. There was a sort of order among all the disorder, in that similar items were placed together, however pell-mell. I could make out more timber beams and coils of rope and chain, together with half-painted sheets of canvas and a profusion of paint-streaked buckets and tubs, as well as obscure bits of machinery. My heart jolted when I noticed a figure with a drooping head slumped on a mound of tarpaulins. A few seconds were enough to assure me that it wasn't a real person but a counterfeit, presumably used by the Snells for testing their equipment. My heart went racing ahead unchecked, though.

There were double doors in the middle of the building, large enough to admit a cart. One of the doors was ajar. I knocked and cleared my throat. Poked my head inside. No sound. Took my head out again. Stood uncertainly in the yard. Waited for my heart to slow down again. Glanced up. The beams with their grotesque hooks were projected across a cloudless evening sky. To the feeling of trespass was added a growing sense of unease.

I slipped through the open door. Called out more loudly. Called “Ned?” Called “Thomas? Is there anybody there?” I hadn't expected an answer, and there was none.

In front of me was a kind of well which extended as far as the roof. Ropes dangled down from it. Rather as in the makeshift arrangement in the Somerset House audience chamber there was a gallery which was reached by a rickety set of stairs. Next to these was a steep wooden slide whose surface had been worn smooth by generations of rolling barrels – or generations of apprentices' arses.

Skirting the various stacks of material on the floor I made my way to the foot of the stairs. I had the unpleasant sensation of being watched and almost caught the counterfeit person looking up at me from his mound of tarpaulins, even though there were no features on his drooping face. He wasn't very real – something between a scarecrow and a mannequin – but quite real enough for me in the half-light and the emptiness of the warehouse.

I climbed the stairs, which creaked under my weight. At the top there was a kind of trapdoor opening onto the slide, with a lever mechanism which operated it. Beyond this I found myself facing a set of small chambers or cells which opened off from each other like a honeycomb. This impression was enhanced by a sweetish scent that pervaded them, the smell from glue or paint or soap perhaps. This was the place where the Jonathan Snells and their workmen put the finishing touches to the scenery and effects, where they gave shape to the waves and the clouds, where they gilded the sun, oiled the cranks, constructed their flying chairs, and so on. These rooms were as deserted as the lower floor.

Or so I thought until I came to the final one. This was a little larger than the others. It had a fine view over the rooftops and on to the river. It was a view which a merchant would have paid good money for. Carpenter's implements were hanging from pegs on the wall, planes and saws and hammers. A long work-bench faced the window with a set of sturdy stools tucked underneath. One of the stools was occupied. A man was sitting on it, slumped forward on the bench. His back was bowed and his arms flung out in front of him, as if in propitiation of some unknown power. With my heart banging in my chest once more, I forced myself to move forward. The man's head was turned towards me. He had shaggy grey hair. But what I noticed first were the fresh, glistening streaks of red which were scoring a path across the side of his face.

A
nd what I noticed next was the paintbrush, tipped with red, which the man was gripping in his outstretched right hand. Then my eyes turned towards a medium-sized chest with a curved top which stood in one corner of the room. The paint on the top was still wet. The grey-haired man opened an eye. I don't think he saw me straightaway. When he did he sat up abruptly and nearly fell off his stool. It wasn't just the side of his face which was spattered with red paint, but also the front of his shirt. The shirt was already striped all the colours of the rainbow.

Rapidly I explained who I was and my purpose in coming to the workshop. I was sorry for disturbing him, I said, but was in search of a ring which I'd mislaid that afternoon somewhere in the stage area of Somerset House, maybe in the gallery. A ring which was not valuable to anyone else but valuable to me, since it had belonged to my father. I explained how I'd called out, thought no one was here, climbed upstairs to make sure, and so on.

Ned Armitage – for this was one of the men who'd been present on the floating platform – was a bit embarrassed to have been caught napping, I think. Maybe he believed I would report back on him to father Snell. He was tired, he said, and shaken by the terrible events of the afternoon. The poor man falling to his death. A dreadful mischance. (There was no hint in his words that he thought it was anything but an accident.)

But time and the hour run through the roughest day, Ned went on. There was still work to be done, like this theatre chest or trunk which had to be painted and done with by eight o'clock the next morning. In the middle of the job, he'd gone to pick up some item from the bench and then, overcome by sudden weariness, sat down for a moment. The next thing he knew was that I was standing over him. I apologized again if I'd surprised him and explained that, just for an awful instant, I'd taken him for dead, what with his stillness and those red streaks running down the side of his face.

Well, this has been a day for death, he said, wiping at his cheek with his fingertips, and that's one state he'd happily be mistaken for being in. But, no, he had not found any ring lying in the gallery above the stage and he'd be sworn to it that his mate Tom Turner hadn't picked one up either. I shrugged as if the matter wasn't so important after all, and in truth I felt a bit guilty spinning the same old story to this honest man. However, under the pretence of wishing to exhaust every avenue, I asked him whether he'd noticed anybody else visiting the floating platform before or during the performance, apart from his employers the Snells and Sir Philip Blake.

Yes, plenty of people, he said. They seemed curious as to how the apparatus worked. They wanted to poke about behind the scenes when they didn't have any business being there. The men and women taking part in the masque just assumed they had a right to wander anywhere around or above the area of the stage. They'd climbed the ladder, they'd tugged on the ropes and pulleys, and generally made nuisances of themselves. The trouble was that they were nobles, most of them, they were sirs and lords and ladies, and it was difficult to tell them to piss off.

Had he noticed anyone in particular, out of the lords and ladies and sirs?

Ned Armitage scratched his grey hair. He stroked his cheek and smeared the red paint even more. He thought. Then he proceeded to enumerate the individuals, or some of them, whom he'd observed up in the gallery. He had a keen eye, perhaps an offshoot of his craft. Also a good memory.

Poor Lady Blake, a widow for the last few hours, she had been up there, he said, and another woman who was keeping her company. Then there'd been a couple of gents, one in a red top, and a different gent with red hair. And another one – who must have been playing the part of the Sea or something similar in the masque because he was covered in weeds and shells that clacked together – and yet a fourth man carrying a decorative lantern and wearing a cloak decorated with eyes, painted eyes. And there'd been a foolish woman dressed all in green and a very beautiful one who was foreign and not wearing many clothes. And others besides, all getting in the way and being a danger to themselves and each other, though he could not call them to mind. Maybe one of these individuals had spotted my missing ring.

I thanked Ned Armitage. I felt almost as grateful to him as if I really had lost my father's heirloom and was now on the way to recover it. The light was dimming in this upstairs workshop and he was eager to get on and finish the job of painting the red chest.

I went to shake his hand. He put out his own and then glanced down at his reddened fingertips. There were still streaks of paint on the side of his face as well. He reached into a pocket with his left hand and drew out a piece of neat white cloth. He was about to wipe his hand on it when he paused and looked at the material. He unfolded it and looked more closely.

“What's wrong?” I said.

“I didn't find any ring of yours,” he said. “But I did collect something up there and stuff it into my pocket. It must've slipped my mind. This handkerchief.”

He held up the cloth. It was a delicate piece of work, spotted with red embroidery. He put it to his nose.

“A lady's from the work – and from the smell. Too good to use for this,” he said, splaying his red-tipped right hand.

“Let me take it,” I said. “I think I know who it might belong to.”

(What did another lie matter, when my whole appearance at the workshop this evening had been founded on a lie?)

Ned handed it over willingly, and I shook him by the hand, ignoring the red paint.

As I was leaving I asked out of curiosity, “That theatre chest you are painting. Who is it for?”

“For a woman to hide in.”

“A woman?”

“A boy, I mean.”

“Is it for us?”

“You are with the King's Men, are you not? No, this is for Worcester's Men over at the Curtain theatre. I believe that a woman has to hide inside it. Don't ask me why. Who knows why anything happens on the stage? I only make the things.”

Thanking Ned Armitage once again, I retraced my steps out of the workshop and through the yard into Three Cranes Lane.

I was reflecting on his words, ‘I only make the things.' I'd have wanted to know the name of the play for which the red chest was to be a prop, just as I'd have wanted to know why a woman was hiding inside it. Not that there'd necessarily be much of a reason. Reasons and motivation on stage are often on the thin side. In the playhouse it's the idea that is exciting, the idea of the woman concealed inside a chest. Whether she's trying to get away from a ravisher, or whether she plans to creep out at dead of night and pour poison into the gaping mouth of her unfaithful, sleeping husband – it hardly matters why she's there. There is a woman (or rather a boy actor) inside a red chest, that is what counts with the audience. But, I thought, if Ned Armitage was incurious about the detail of our profession, so was I incurious – or just plain ignorant – about his.

Ned had been very useful, however, and later in my room at Mrs Buckle's I attempted to sort out the information he'd provided.

If Jonathan Snell the younger was correct in his suspicions, then some person had deliberately and skilfully cut part-way through two of the ropes which supported the
deus ex machina
chair, knowing that when the apparatus was actually supporting a human weight the ropes ought to snap and the occupant be thrown to the ground.

It would have the appearance of an accident. If it hadn't been for Jonathan's inquisitiveness, it would still appear to have been an accident. The cutting of the ropes must have been done a short time before the performance started, otherwise there was a risk that anyone examining the chair or the ropes – one of the Snells, say, or Ned Armitage or Tom Turner – would have detected something wrong. Unless, of course, one of those four had tampered with the ropes himself. They, above all, would be in the best position to do so.

The principal question was: if Sir Philip had been murdered, and in such a way that the murder appeared accidental, then who had done it?

And another question which was almost as important: why had he been murdered?

Perhaps the answer to “why?” would give the answer to “who?”

Now I possessed a kind of catalogue of some of the people who'd been up in the gallery during the time before Sir Philip's death. It was easy enough to recall Ned Armitage's words, but slightly harder to invent motives and reasons as to why any of them might want to see this harmless-seeming individual dead. Harder, but by no means impossible.