An Honourable Murderer (35 page)

“That fellow Ratchett would still have died.”

“He had the misfortune to go to the Three Cranes yard at the wrong moment. If he hadn't glimpsed Sir Philip when he did –”

“Misfortune! Nick, you don't want any of these people to be guilty.”

“I suppose not, they are none of them murderers. Did you believe that story about how Ratchett's death wasn't intended?”

Abel was silent for a moment. We were getting out into the open country which starts quite soon on the fringes of Southwark. We were guided only by the moonlight and by Abel's familiarity with the route.

“If I heard such a story in a play I'd probably disbelieve it,” he said. “But listening to Sir Philip Blake describe it, he did not seem to be covering anything up. There was a kind of honesty in what he said. A less straightforward man would have hummed and ha-ed, and tried to shuffle out of things. He admitted responsibility for what happened.”

“I thought so too.”

“And you weren't exactly mourning Ratchett's death either, Nick.”

“The man was a caterpillar,” I said, trying to echo Sir Philip's dismissive style. “That was another reason for doing nothing. Ratchett's death was as convenient for me as it was for them.”

I let this thought drift away into the moonlight.

“What gave you the truth, Nick? You seemed to know what had happened before anybody'd started speaking.”

“Odd ideas that were drifting through my head, I suppose. The idea that some events are staged purely for show. They don't have any real meaning, or not much of a meaning.”

“Events such as?”

“The swearing of the oath of peace between England and Spain. That ceremony in the Chapel Royal was as much of a performance as Ben's
Masque of Peace
. People dressing up and saying the lines that were written down for them. In our case we were saying what Ben had told us to say. In the King's case he was saying what Cecil had told him to say.”

“It's a jump from that to a staged death.”

“Yes, well . . . you can blame Martin Barton too. I'd been looking at my lines for his
Melancholy Man
tomorrow. I remembered how that story turns on a Duke whom everyone assumes to be dead after an assassination attempt . . .”

“Before he comes back in disguise as a hermit to see how they're all getting on without him,” said Abel who, like me, had a minor part in Barton's play.

“Yes.”

“Far-fetched,” said Abel.

“Martin Barton would not like to hear you say so. He thinks Shakespeare is lacking in realism because that play about the Moor turns on a handkerchief. Anyway, it occurred to me that there might be – advantages – for Sir Philip Blake in playing dead, since I'd already heard how Cecil was on his tail. And then other things came together, such as the fact that Bartholomew Ridd's laundrywoman hadn't been able to clean up the ‘cloak of Truth' by soaking it in milk or using salt and water on the thing. No wonder she hadn't been able to get the blood out easily, since it wasn't blood but red paint. And I'd seen just such an application of red paint in the Three Cranes yard. Old Ned Armitage had got it over his face by mistake. So one idea led to another . . .”

“Blake is a good actor, he played the artisan well. I'd never have guessed.”

“Yes. But he didn't have to speak much, he hid behind that curtain of hair. He probably enjoyed it, just as you or I would enjoy playing the nobleman for a week.”

“A year would do.”

“The real strain fell on the others who were in on the deception. Lady Blake fainted when her husband apparently died on stage. I thought that was perhaps to distract us from the trick that was being played, but the faint might have been real.”

“No feint faint,” said Abel.

“Tell it to Shakespeare, he appreciates that kind of joke.”

“You're taking that tone because you didn't think of it first. Go on with your explanation.”

“Where was I?”

“With Lady Blake.”

“Afterwards when I saw her she was sometimes merry and cheerful and sometimes tense and strained. That might fit a new widow, but it would fit even better a woman who was glad that her husband had been preserved alive but was also anxious all the time because he might be found out. The same with Maria More, who denied that the dropped handkerchief was anything to do with her even though the handkerchief was completely unimportant. They were living in expectation of discovery. Even Bill Inman was on edge, for all that he seemed so bluff and cheerful. I saw him and Lady Jane embracing just after her husband's death, but I wonder who was reassuring who.”

“So that's it,” said Abel. “I can tell you though that I had a nasty surprise when I heard Sir Philip's voice. It was a dead man talking. A ghost.”

“So did I,” I said, “even though I'd guessed by then who he was. I mean, who Tom Turner was.”

“Seeing as it might have been a ghost, I should have slipped into my best Horatio style,” said Abel. “Did I tell you I might have the part of Horatio in
Hamlet
?”

“You have mentioned it now and then.”

Abel stopped in the middle of the moonlit highway and began to declaim:

If thou hast any sound or use of voice
,

Speak to me.

If there be any good thing to be done
,

That may to thee do ease and grace to me
,

Speak to me
.

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life

Extorted treasure in the womb of earth
,

For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death
,

Speak of it.

The dropping moon gave him a silver tinge. At this moment, such was my state of elation and exhaustion, that I wouldn't have been altogether surprised to see a ghost stalking past us, going about his business by the glimpses of the moon. If Abel could have conjured him with the power of his voice and his earnest tone then he would have done.

But no ghost came. Instead we arrived unscathed at Abel's lodging in Kentish Street. He offered me his bed to share for the night and, in all innocency, I accepted his offer and, in all innocency, we shared it.

I
did not return to my Thames Street lodging until the next evening. Abel and I walked up from his place in Kentish Street early in the morning. There was the first touch of autumn in the air, like a dog nipping round your heels in a not altogether playful manner. The mist still lay on the river when we arrived at the playhouse but it was rapidly burnt off by the sun.

There was a Globe rehearsal for
The Melancholy Man
during the morning and the performance of a different piece by another playwright in the afternoon (it was
Love's Triumph
by William Hordle, if you're interested). It was satisfying to be back in our own playhouse, newly renovated – or ‘tarted up to buggery' as Sam the doorman would say. It was satisfying to be playing according to our own schedule rather than running around at the beck and call of the court and taking on parts that didn't really belong to us, such as Grooms of the Outer Chamber. Apart from any other consideration, we hadn't been that well remunerated as a company for our attendance on the Spanish mission to London, receiving a total of twenty-one pounds and twelve shillings to cover a period of more than ten days. It sounds a lot but most of the money went on necessary expenses such as barbering, laundering and provisioning ourselves, since the court high-ups never think that the rest of humanity has to be washed, shorn and fed, especially if we're to look and feel our best. And the King's Men didn't even get any new livery out of the whole affair.

So, to get back to our proper business of murder, romance, mayhem, comedy, intrigue and deception was a pleasant relief. While I was practising the not very demanding part of the murderer Lussorio in
The Melancholy Man
, it was curious to reflect that Martin Barton had unwittingly helped me to solve the mystery of the ‘murder' of Sir Philip Blake by showing how a man might come back to life under another guise. The playwright himself, with that dainty blue hat on his red head, was in attendance during the morning rehearsal even though he wasn't needed and would have got in the way if Burbage hadn't slapped him down from time to time. Writers need slapping down from time to time in my opinion. Even so, Barton mouthed along to his own lines and mimed the actions, standing to one side of the stage. I was still waiting for his hat to fall off.

I'd forgotten that I had left the passage window unlatched from where Abel and I climbed out the previous evening into Brend's Rents. It suddenly occurred to me in mid-rehearsal that it would still be open. So, in a moment when I wasn't needed, I hurried off to fasten it. I should have left it alone for, as I was leaning out to grasp the catch, William Shakespeare walked past.

“Just shutting this, Will.”

I made a bit of a fuss about doing so, turning the catch with precision, and drew attention to the sort of trivial action which is best performed without thought.

WS stopped in his tracks.

“It shouldn't have been open in the first place,” he said.

I shrugged casually, but like the window-closing movement this gesture was false, and I felt it as false.

“I'll have a word with Sam about it,” said Shakespeare.

“Oh yes,” I said.

“As a matter of fact I have just been speaking to him.”

“You have?”

I was glad that the light in the passage was dim. It was always dim in this passageway.

“Sam is very worried that the door to his room doesn't shut fast,” said WS. “He says that you were most concerned about it too, Nicholas, when you talked to him yesterday.”

It crossed my mind to ‘forget' the conversation with Sam but then I thought better of it. A partial admission was safer.

“We weren't talking about the door to his room as such,” I said.

“That's odd because I got the impression that your whole conversation had been about the door that wouldn't shut. It's unusual for a player to be so concerned about
domestic
matters.”

“He did mention it once or twice, yes.
The old bugger
– the door I mean, not Sam. That's how he referred to the door.”

I had made the mistake of trying to imitate Sam's style of speech. William Shakespeare did not seem to respond positively to my attempt at lightness. He had more to say.

“But that wasn't what he wanted to talk to me about, the door which doesn't shut and which, in truth, we must see to. What bothered Sam was that someone has been fiddling around with his keys. They were in different places to where they ought to have been. He has a system, you know.”

“Labels and so on,” I said.

“Yes,” said WS.

“Perhaps he put them back in a different place himself yesterday.”

“
He
put them back?”

“Well, he's in charge . . .”

“And next, Nicholas, you will be saying that he's an old man, that his sight's going and so on.”

“It's true that Sam is getting on . . .”

“Yet we entrust this old man with our money, don't we? He is our principal gatherer and responsible for all our playhouse takings. So we can trust him to know about his own keys, I suppose.”

“Yes, we can,” I said.

I was in my costume as Lussorio since we were still in mid-rehearsal. Underneath my murderer's gear I was sweating like a pig.

“I've just been having a look round the place to make sure of everything, in case anyone got inside here last night,” continued Shakespeare. “I've been examining the Globe from top to bottom. From pole to pole, you might say. I even went up to the cabin on the stage roof. There's a fine view from the roof now that the mist has lifted.”

“I must have a look sometime.”

“The rushes on the walkway round the cabin are all scuffed and trodden on – although we haven't had cause to use the hut or the lifting-gear so far this season.”

“Sightseers maybe,” I suggested. “It's a fine view from up there, as you say.”

“
Sightseers
?”

“Maybe not sightseers.”

“All seems well, though,” said WS after a long pause.

“That's good,” I said.

“And no damage has been done, Nicholas.”

There was – perhaps – just the hint of a question in the remark, a slight lift at the end of his words.

“No damage has been done, William.”

“Then we shall have to assume that if anyone fiddled around with Sam's keys it must have been a ghost. If any person – and it was more than one or two from the looks of things – was up on the stage roof, then that must have been a ghost as well.”

“Ghosts, yes.”

“Playhouses are full of ghosts, on and off the stage.”

And with that WS walked away down the passage. I stood there for a minute at least, breathing deep and reflecting that I'd had a lucky escape (although in one sense I had not escaped at all). I recalled how rapid had been Abel's and my relocking of the doors and replacing of the keys on the previous evening. Hardly surprising I'd put them back on the wrong pegs. Sam must be much more sharp-eyed than I'd thought.

Then I remembered that I was taking part in a rehearsal and that if I missed my cue I'd receive a rebuke from Dick Burbage which would be considerably less subtle than the one I'd just had from Shakespeare. I hurried back to the stage, sweaty and distracted. I had to play a scene in which I expressed my ‘guilt' for having allowed the Duke to get away from a murder attempt – even murderers may feel uncomfortable over a job badly done or not done at all. On this occasion I did not have to feign shiftiness and guilt.

Shakespeare's reference to the ghosts which haunt playhouses chimed with the moment during the previous night when Abel and I had been walking back to his lodgings. He'd declaimed those lines of Horatio's which are a challenge to the ghost to declare its purpose in returning to stalk the earth.