An Honourable Murderer (33 page)

I paused and looked at the engine-man Jonathan Snell. He said, “My son pointed all this out at the time.”

“And then he retracted it,” I said.

“Only because I discovered . . . certain facts later,” said the son.

“That's as I thought,” I said. “You'd been so sure beforehand that someone had tampered with the ropes, even while your father was trying to make light of the whole idea, that when you said you'd changed your mind I concluded that you'd found out something afterwards which you didn't know at the time. There was only one possibility which fitted. It had to be something which implicated . . . a person close to you.”

“That's true,” said the son.

“Then we had a discussion up in the gallery, you two gentlemen and I, and I said that I would ask some questions about Sir Philip's death, and try to find out more about it.”

“I wondered why you offered to do that,” said father Snell. “We didn't want it. There was no need.”

“
You
didn't want it, true, but I had – private reasons for suggesting it,” I said. “There was a man who was demanding that I look into the accident at Somerset House. He had a hold over me.”

It seemed appropriate to confess a small item to them since I was expecting so much confession from them in return, even if tacitly.

“But I got nowhere. And when Jonathan here said he'd changed his mind about Blake's death and that it
was
an accident, it looked as if there was no prospect of finding more.”

“Then what has happened to bring us all here if there's nothing to find out?” said Lady Jane.

“I heard that you were about to get married again, my lady.”

“I am.”

She said this quietly, without apology but without defiance.

“So soon after the death of your first husband?”

“So soon after his death.”

“And I'm afraid that was enough to set me thinking. It might have set a saint thinking. You must forgive me, Lady Jane, for attributing base motives to your intentions . . . But it wasn't only that. A friend who also appeared in the
Masque of Peace
told me that he thought Sir Philip had been drugged or poisoned before being placed in the chair.”

“What! Impossible! How could he tell?” said Bill Inman with what sounded like genuine puzzlement.

“There was a look on Sir Philip's face. How did my friend describe it now? Like watching someone having a nightmare which you can't wake them from, I think it was. Also he had other – evidence.”

(I was unwilling to reveal that Abel had got hold of Sir Philip's flask. In any case, I no longer believed that there'd been any kind of drug or poison in it.)

“So it seemed to me that, in the light of Lady Blake's remarriage and my friend's story, there was a strong chance that Sir Philip
had
been murdered after all. But there was only one way to put this to the proof.”

“To send out accusing letters to all of us,” said Maria More.

“Yes. I knew that if anyone came to this – this meeting – then he or she at least had something to hide in the matter of Sir Philip's death. I expected one person, perhaps two. But there are seven of you!”

I almost laughed. Nerves, I suppose. I felt like a fisherman who staggers back home with more than he can carry. I glanced round the little cabin at the array of faces, half illuminated, half shadowed by the lanterns. The only people who hadn't yet spoken were Ned Armitage and, apart from his single “yes”, Tom Turner. An hour ago I would have been very surprised at their presence. Now I knew the reasons for it.

“That is not much to build an accusation on,” said the older Snell, who seemed to be speaking on behalf of the group. “A story told you by a fellow player about the expression on Sir Philip Blake's face and the fact that Lady Blake desires to get married again.”

“No, it is not much perhaps. But when it's combined with other events, with other deaths maybe . . .”

I had their full attention now.

“A moment ago I mentioned a man who had a hold over me. Well, something happened to him, although I can't prove it now since he's dead to the world and the world's dead to him. And then there was that other man called Giles Cass who played the part of Suspicion in Ben Jonson's masque. He died apparently by falling into the river after he'd struck his head on some steps at Somerset House. You remember that? You must do, for you were all present, I think.

“But it's not Cass's drowning which I'm thinking of. That death might have been as accidental as Sir Philip's was supposed to have been. It's what Cass said to me shortly before he died. He was talking about Secretary Cecil and how King James called him his beagle and how Cecil had been on Sir Philip's trail for treason . . . for being part of Sir Walter Raleigh's conspiracy . . .”

For some reason Tom Turner, who'd seated himself in the
deus ex machina
chair, fidgeted impatiently at this point.

“And that did set me thinking but rather late in the day, while I was waiting around up here. I thought about the penalty for treason, the terrible penalty. The hanging . . . and the rest of it.”

Maria More shivered again although it was growing stuffy inside this close little hut.

“And I thought of how, if I were a nobleman and being accused of treason, I would do almost anything to escape the terrible penalty. But of course if I were actually accused of treason it would be too late. I'd be in the Tower and facing trial and after that the scaffold and the hangman's bloody hands. Too late. So if I was going to elude the charge of treason, I'd have to take action before that charge was brought. I could run away to a foreign country perhaps – but I do not want to leave my wife, for I am a married man, happily married. And I have great estates in the country and a house in London. I do not want to relinquish any of these things. But I must relinquish them for a time if I am to survive. Survive until my enemies like Cecil are dead themselves perhaps.”

“Oh, Cecil is immortal,” said Tom Turner. “He will outlast all of us.”

This was a surprising observation to come from a tonguetied artisan.

“When I first visited the workshop which belonged to Master Snell,” I continued – taking my time over the story for I was beginning to enjoy myself now, strange as that may seem – “when I went to the Three Cranes yard, I saw a mannequin figure sitting on a pile of tarpaulins. For a moment I thought he was real. But he wasn't real, merely a figure made of linen and stuffed with some material.”

“With rags and lead and sand,” said father Snell. “The figure's weight has to be judged to a nicety.”

“Of course,” I said. “Everything in this business had to be done to a nicety. Then exploring further in the Three Cranes yard I came across Master Ned Armitage here. He was asleep at the time but – the silliest thing! – because he'd got red paint smeared across his face I believed for a second that Ned was dead. So I saw how easy it was to play dead accidentally. I ought to know of course, being a player.”

Ned Armitage looked faintly, well, sheepish. Perhaps he didn't like being shown up for having fallen asleep in the workplace. As if there weren't greater offences! I paused and looked in the direction of Jonathan Snell senior.

“A body is a body but it doesn't have to be real. That's why there was a strange, distant expression on Sir Philip's face when he fell. When ‘it' fell. No wonder he looked like someone who couldn't be woken from a nightmare – no wonder he looked remote, out of this world. The horror was simulated with the figure's gaping mouth and white face. You relied on artificial lighting and the fact that what everyone sees on stage is what they want to see. Or not exactly what they want to see but what they
expect
to see. No one's going to have the chance to examine a man while he's falling down anyway.”

There was a silence. Quickly I said to the older Snell, “What was the head made of?”

“Wax, together with a wood frame that would crack with a nasty sound – and other matter inside the head. It was a challenge to our art.”

There was pride in the father's tone. I started to understood why he and his workshop had become involved in this dangerous deception.

“That's why almost everyone involved in this came up to the platform beforehand to have a look, it was a work of art,” I said. “The image of Sir Philip Blake.”

I did not need their half-nods, their half-smiles to confirm this.

“One of you ladies dropped her handkerchief up there.”

“It was mine, Nicholas,” said Maria More.

“I gave it her, it was a fine piece of work,” said Lady Jane.

“And I denied ever having it because I was worried that you were asking questions,” said Maria.

“The handkerchief didn't matter after all,” I said, conscious that it was now in the hands of a French whore in the Mitre. “It simply showed that there'd been a woman in the gallery. But then everyone had been in the gallery, the whole world and his dog.”

“Everyone was curious. Everyone was in on the secret.”

“All except your son, Master Snell.”

“My father thinks I cannot keep a secret,” said Jonathan. There was no bitterness in his tone, just a matter-of-fact statement. I was inclined to think the father was right. I didn't say, however, that it would have been better if Jonathan had been in the know from the beginning since he wouldn't have then emerged with his murder theory. Did the father rely on the son's dim sight for him not to notice the substitution of the mannequin for the real Sir Philip? No, that wouldn't be enough, he must have found some little task to keep him out of the way on the other side of the gallery.

“Did you use the mannequin from the workshop, the one I saw originally?” I said.

“Heavens no,” said father Snell. “That was a crude model. For the masque we constructed a special figure, one with plenty of detail and refinement.”

“And it was your good luck that the cloak the mannequin was wearing flew up and over his head as he landed. It prevented anyone getting a close look at the shattered head.”

“The head would have looked believable enough, for a moment in poor light. And who is going to look for longer than a moment at such a horrid sight? I tell you, Nicholas, I was almost sorry that no one had the opportunity to examine our handiwork afterwards.”

I remembered blood pooling out from beneath the cloak, and someone screaming at the back of the audience chamber and Lady Jane dropping down in a dead faint, then Jonathan Snell hastening forward so that he was first on the scene. I remembered the sound his knees had made as they hit the boards beside the shrouded shape. No surprise that he'd hurried to get there.

“But why use red paint?” I said. “Sheep's blood is more convenient. The players use sheep's blood on stage when we want to simulate a wound. And it washes out more easily, you only have to use milk or salt and water – or spit on it. Red paint is much harder to remove.”

“We used what was to hand,” said Snell. “In a workshop you have plenty of red paint but sheep's blood is in short supply. We needed a fair quantity of blood to horrify people but also to convince them. And it was convincing, Nicholas. You have to admit that. We fooled – oh, I don't know how many people we fooled.”

“You fooled the world,” I said. “Everyone outside your little circle believes that Sir Philip Blake is dead.”

“Everyone but one person,” said Bill Inman.

“Everyone but one,” I echoed, fervently hoping that Abel Glaze had made his escape by now but fearing that he hadn't.

Tom Turner stood up from the
deus ex machina
chair. I saw Lady Jane grasp his arm.

“Forgive me, sir,” he said, “if I do not remove this, ah, disguise. I have grown used to it and it is safer.”

He tugged at the lank hair which more or less concealed his features. A kind of shiver ran down my spine. I was looking at a dead man, though not a ghost. When I spoke I was pleased that my voice betrayed no tremor.

“What disguise will you use as the country cousin, sir?”

“The odd burr in my hair should do it, and the occasional twang in my voice, zurr.”

I almost smiled despite myself. Ben Jonson had been quite wrong about Sir Philip Blake. He was a good actor, the very best in one sense since you wouldn't have suspected him of acting at all. His current disguise was almost incidental, although the lank wig allowed him to conceal his otherwise prominent ears and the stubble on his chin was a replacement for the neat, pointed beard he'd worn as a courtier. And Blake was capable of playing several parts. He'd already played himself, and I'd taken him to be a mere nobleman, good-natured, not over-intelligent, with his vague manner and his repetition of ‘Very good' at almost every comment. Then he had played at his own death or rather allowed a mannequin to fake it for him. After that he'd taken on the part of a simple artisan. And now he was about to be a fresh husband. But it was the artisan's part I was interested in.

“Why did you do it?” I said. “Hang about in disguise, work in the yard, take a backstage part in the masque?”

“I was curious to see how my death was received. Why do you act, Master Revill? Isn't there a thrill in deceiving people? No one looks at a common workman. And I was not found out.”

“Until now,” I said.

“Until now,” he said.

“And why did you pick such an elaborate means of death?The risks were very high.”

“The penalty was very high too,” said Sir Philip. It was the traitor's penalty he was referring to, the one which I hadn't been able to get out of my thoughts recently.

“But you might have drowned in the river or fallen from your horse or died in any one of a dozen different ways.”

“If I'd fallen from a horse or drowned, then a body would have had to be produced. A real body. I required witnesses too, the more the better, but they had to be naturally present and they had to believe that the person they were watching was me. That way, no one – not even Secretary Cecil – could be in any doubt that I was dead. You said yourself, Master Revill, that my death was very public. It was seen by dozens of people in the most dramatic circumstances. Who would think of trickery in a makeshift theatre, in a place where trickery is taken for granted?”