An Honourable Murderer (18 page)

First, there was Lady Jane Blake. The woman keeping her company was presumably Maria More, acting the part of handmaid to Plenty in the
Masque of Peace
. I didn't know much about Mistress More, except that she had firm views about women not being permitted to play on the public stage. That hardly seemed an adequate motive for murder.

Lady Jane was different, though. William Shakespeare had said that husband and wife did not get on. Was this the common gossip? Did that mean they'd like to see the back of each other? Many wives would like to see the back of their husbands, no doubt, and vice versa. But that doesn't mean they'll go as far as murder. On the other hand, there was the dialogue I'd eavesdropped on at the Blake mansion, the one between Lady Jane and the older Snell.
Then this will come down
, she'd said.
Oh, it'll come down all right
, he'd said. Were they referring to the flying chair from which her husband had fallen to his death? It sounded like it. And if they weren't, then what were they being so giggly and secretive about? And was this the reason why Snell had been so reluctant to listen to his son's suspicions about a murder – because he had been conspiring with her to kill Sir Philip?

Then Ned had referred to two gentlemen in the gallery, one in a red top and another one with red hair. The redheaded one was Martin Barton, I guessed. From my glimpse of the satirist in the Line and Compass ale-house, he hadn't exactly been overcome with grief at Blake's death. In fact, he rather appeared to take pleasure in it, as some people do relish a disaster. Also Barton disliked Ben Jonson. Claimed it would have been better for the world if the playwright had stuck to his bricklaying. Barton disliked – no, he loathed – the court and all its outworks as well. Everything there was foul and decayed. This was a fairly usual position for a satirist to take up, and his snarling hostility towards a large portion of the world had been well on display in
The Melancholy Man
. Barton, with his spindly legs and sharp tongue, preferred the honest thumb of the craftsman. None of this turned him into a murderer, though. What would he have gained out of the killing of Sir Philip? Only that the death disrupted Jonson's masque, to be sure, perhaps put an end to its chances of performance altogether, and that must gratify Barton. I thought of the pond of jealousy which playwrights swim in, splashing unhappily.

The gentleman wearing ‘a red top' might have been one of the Spanish grandees, the platter heads. At the practice the Dons had appeared richly dressed, wearing white and gold together with something purple about their upper halves. But John Ratchett, who had tricked me into becoming a spy, was also wearing a red doublet. I'd seen him shortly after the ‘accident' in Somerset House. Had he been there to witness it as well? He'd told me that he knew what had taken place. If he was in the pay of France, then he had the most obvious of motives for trying to stop peace breaking out between England and Spain. An unexplained death could throw doubt on the enterprise and, if not halt it altogether, then impede its smooth progress. But if Ratchett was behind Sir Philip's death, then why had he insisted that I delve into the circumstances surrounding that death? Perhaps to distract attention from his own role in it, or to discover whether anyone else harboured suspicions.

Who else had Ned Armitage remembered as visiting the floating platform?

It was simple enough to identify a couple more of the women. The foolish one dressed all in green was surely Lady Fortune, costumed to play the part of Hope. While the very beautiful one who was foreign and not wearing many clothes was certainly Doña Luisa de Mendoza, playing
La Paz
.

Then there was William Inman, the secretary and righthand man to Blake, the one taking the part of Oceanus in the masque. Like everyone else he'd been up there in the gallery, covered in weeds and seashells. Maybe he was in pursuit of Doña Luisa, waggling his trident about. Bill Inman appeared bluff and harmless. Yet within barely an hour of his master's death and in the presence of the corpse, I had discovered him and the widow in a hot clinch. Were they united in loss – or in lust? If it was the second, then that must be one of the oldest reasons in the world for doing away with a spouse. Bill Inman and Lady Jane might have conspired together, perhaps with the help of engineer Snell, to get rid of the husband. It would be an unequal match, if it got as far as a wedding. But then unequal matches are made every day. Also I recalled that Lady Blake had come from a comparatively humble background, her father being an apothecary. So she was used to unequal matches, even if the union with Blake had been very much to her advantage.

There was one final figure whom Ned Armitage had identified as being present in the gallery. This one was carrying a decorative lantern and wearing a cloak covered with painted eyes. I recognized the description of the masque figure, Suspicion. The eyes on the cloak are self-explanatory. Suspicion carries a lamp because he is always prying into corners and sniffing out other men's actions. The part of Suspicion had been played by Giles Cass.

I couldn't get to the bottom of Cass. He was someone out of my sphere. I had seen and heard him conversing with the platter-headed Dons in the Spanish tongue. He had made some witty remark when I'd been stuck up in the chair during the earlier practice. Yet he was apparently hostile towards the Spanish settlement, or at any rate wary of it. Hadn't he announced in the Mermaid tavern in front of Jonson and the rest of us that he couldn't see, for the life of him, why we were negotiating with our old enemies? I had not quite believed him at the time and thought he might have been speaking to provoke us. William Shakespeare – who seemed to know everything about everybody – had called him a weathervane. He'd said that Cass had connections with Walter Raleigh before transferring his loyalty to Robert Cecil. No, veering towards Cecil. I doubted that Cass had loyalty to anyone. He turned where the wind blew strongest. But it was Raleigh I was thinking about now.

Sir Walter.

The lion in the Tower.

Raleigh must have seen the spectacle, or at least heard the noise, as the Spanish party paraded up the river the other day. As a privileged prisoner in the Tower, he enjoyed a ringside seat. Except that, far from enjoying this peaceful armada, it would have cut him to the quick.

Raleigh had once been the most hated man in London. It was said – how fairly I do not know – that he had taken his pipe out of his mouth and blown smoke into the face of the Earl of Essex while the latter was on his way to the execution block. Essex had been a great favourite with Londoners (until the time came for them to join him in the perilous business of rebellion), so any enemy of Essex was an enemy of theirs.

But people are fickle. When it came to Sir Walter Raleigh's turn to be accused of treason and of conspiring with Spain, they admired the way he stood up for himself under examination. And, to be frank, I do not think many of us believed that Raleigh would ever conspire
with
Spain, but only against her. He was passionate against the country. Therefore when Raleigh was sentenced to that terrible fate of drawing and quartering – which involved his guts being torn out and his privy parts being cut off and thrown into the fire before his very eyes, prior to his head being severed from his body – there was disquiet among the people. And so the wise King James reprieved Sir Walter from that terrible fate and permitted him to live quietly in the comforts of the Tower, the very place where Essex had met his own death under the warrant of Elizabeth. Maybe this was what the new King had intended all along, to show how
his
justice could be tempered with mercy.

Sir Walter had his supporters, more of them now than ever. The arrival of the Spanish in our town was not the most popular event of the year. The mood of the Londoners on the Thames that recent afternoon had been expectant and curious, but it was not warm or truly welcoming. What if Giles Cass was still dedicated to the Raleigh cause, that is to the anti-Spanish cause? So dedicated that, with or without direction, he had decided to spoil the chances of peace between the two nations? On that interpretation, Cass's ear-whispering closeness to the Dons was a ploy to give the impression he was on their side. While behind everyone's backs he was plotting the death of Blake. A greater effect might have been produced by striking at one of the English principals to the treaty – Robert Cecil himself, perhaps, or the Earl of Nottingham – but that would have been a much more dangerous business than trying for the life of a comparatively lowly courtier. On the other hand, the murder of Blake (if that's what it was) had taken place in Queen Anne's own household, in her absence but right under the noses of the Spaniards. It was a bad omen. Perhaps there was worse to follow . . .?

So there I had it. The individuals who'd been in the gallery at some point during this fatal afternoon included Lady Blake and Maria More, Lady Fortune and Doña Luisa de Mendoza, William Inman, Giles Cass and John Ratchett (perhaps) or one of the Spaniards (possibly). In addition the Snells, father and son, had been up there, together with Ned Armitage and Tom Turner and perhaps others from the Snell workshop.

There might have been even more people in the gallery whom Ned Armitage hadn't noticed or had forgotten about. I had been up there myself briefly, escorting Sir Philip. In short, if this was a murder, then the list of those who had the opportunity to do it wasn't confined to these named characters. On the other hand, it was . . . interesting . . . that without much straining I could think of a motive why almost any of them might – no more than
might
– have been pleased to see the back of the harmless courtier.

There was no evidence for any of this, apart from the severed ropes. If they had been severed. Deliberately severed. You'd have to be an expert to do that so precisely, wouldn't you? To cut them just enough so that for a few moments they sustained the chair which held Sir Philip, before giving way at a sufficient distance above the ground to ensure his death when he fell. It would surely take an expert hand, like one of the Snells. Would a woman be capable of it? If there was someone to guide her hand, possibly. I suddenly remembered the handkerchief which Ned Armitage had found in the gallery and which I'd taken from him, pretending to know who it belonged to.

I drew it from my pocket. It was made of linen with delicate cutwork and adorned with red spots of embroidery. I held it to my nose. The principal scent was rosewater but underneath there was a darker, muskier odour. A lady's handkerchief. I wondered whether it belonged to Lady Jane or perhaps to Doña Luisa de Mendoza. The very name of the Spaniard sounded like a scent. How should one set about returning a handkerchief to a beautiful Spanish lady? And what would she say in return?
Gracias, señor
,
muchas gracias
?

These pleasant thoughts were interrupted by a low groan from outside my room. In time I might grow used to Mrs Buckle's sleep-walking. She was drawn out of bed by those visions of her late husband, who appeared to her to be stalking about the house, now seen walking up the stairs, now turning a corner.

I opened the door. My landlady was, as before, standing on the floor below. She held a candle. She was not alone this time. There was no ghost visible, but her daughter Elizabeth was beside her, whispering in her ear, urging her to return to her chamber. The mother seemed reluctant to move and Elizabeth grasped her arm and steered her back towards the bedroom.

I returned to my own room. Something about the scene I'd just witnessed snagged at my memory but I couldn't think what it was.

D
espite Sir Philip's death, Ben Jonson's
Masque of Peace
was still scheduled to go ahead in two days' time, shortly before the formal oath-taking and signing of the treaty at Whitehall. We learned that Jonson had received a hint from the highest quarters – from Secretary Cecil, in other words – that there was no question of calling off the Somerset House performance. It should be viewed as a tribute to the late courtier. Sir Philip's body lay in the Blake mansion along the Strand. It was due to be transported to the couple's country house for interment in the family vault. (None of these great families is content with one fine house but must have two at least.) Anyway, body or no body, in the matter of the masque, national pride was at stake. It was part of the celebrations surrounding the outbreak of peace. To cancel it would be to cast doubt on the validity of that peace.

Blake's death was officially an accident. As far as I could see, suspicions as to its cause were confined to Jonathan Snell the younger and Nicholas Revill the player. A complication was that John Ratchett was compelling me to report to him on my findings. But what did I owe Ratchett anyway? He was in the pay of the French ambassador (and so was I, indirectly). If I told him – as I intended to – that I had discovered nothing out of place, then he would have to be satisfied with that, wouldn't he? Unless he himself had been responsible for the ‘accident'. Even so, by this logic, when I told him that there was nothing amiss and that Sir Philip's fall had been an unlucky chance, the hand of God, and the rest of it, Ratchett ought to be satisfied because he was not suspected. Did this logic work? I didn't know. My poor brain could not contain so much logic.

And suppose it was murder, then was there an obligation on me to try to discover who had done it? No, I decided, there was no obligation, or not straightaway. My first responsibility was to myself, to escape from the mess I was in.

There were several concerned parties to report to on the death in Somerset House. William Shakespeare, for one, had requested that I tell him about anything ‘untoward' in our preparations for the masque. You can't get much more untoward than a violent death.

Naturally, WS knew what had happened but he made me tell the story over again, asking questions at various points.