by Bart Casey
“The letter then ends with reports of how ladies later portraying Faith, Hope, and Charity stumbled around flubbing their lines before being sick and spewing in the lower hall. The evening was then concluded by another lady playing Victory, who had to be led away and put to bed and Peace who was unable to pull off a triumphant finale. I’m not sure Harrington ever actually sent this letter—it seems almost treasonous. He might just have kept it and shown it to friends as a jibe against James. But there are other reports that much of the state visit was a total drunken shambles.”
“That was quite a party,” said Stephen. “But how do you think it connects with the Heminge letter?”
“Well, I think Master Heminge was talking to Anne about Macbeth. The Chamber and Revels accounts show that Heminge was paid for putting on three plays before James and the Danish king. Two at Greenwich and then one at Hampton Court specifically noted as taking place on August 7. Early that day, King Christian was installed in the Order of the Garter. Sir Henry may even have been there because he had been too ill to go to the usual annual installation and dinner in April 1606, but he’d recovered. Then that evening they had the play at Hampton Court. I think that was Macbeth. It was a bit of a finale for the visit, because Christian went back to his ship for the trip home within a day or two afterward. Anyway, I believe that Anne Vavasour helped cut the play down and made certain improvements to some of the speeches given by Lady Macbeth, as shown on your scroll...at least in the copies I had. Her education and examples of extant poems attributed to her show she well may have been up to that challenge. And after Elizabeth was gone, she probably came back to court—in fact, James and Queen Anne seemed very fond of her. The Queen gave her a fabulously valuable jewel after chatting with her at Lee’s house all of one day in 1608.
“Anne might have even played the part of Lady Macbeth in that performance, you know—just like the poor gels who acted in the Queen of Sheba. And that might be why she had that scroll. All the ladies at James’s court were prancing around acting in the masques Inigo Jones put on for entertainment. It was only the public playhouses that required men to play the women’s roles. Anyway, this would, perhaps, have been the first time that play had been performed at court. Also, it was clearly abridged from a longer version, now lost—probably because King Christian didn’t know English very well. But he would have been able to appreciate the witches round their cauldrons, all the blood, the drunken porter, and the songs—so all that was lobbed in. Someone also wisely cut the scene about Lady Macbeth lamenting her lost child—one of those marked out on the scroll. The whole state visit was meant to celebrate the birth of a new child for James by Christian’s sister, but that baby by Anne of Denmark did not survive and its unexpected death cast a pall over all the proceedings.
“You mention some of the pasteovers on your scroll were written out in an italic hand, and I would guess those are very similar to Anne’s own hand. I think she rewrote those speeches to a degree and Heminge was complimenting her that the speeches were so good—with her “cuts” pasted over the original words—that the players managed to keep the Danish king awake during the whole performance, although they had wisely shortened it down to probably just under two hours. So it was ‘the cut that woke the Dane.’”
Stephen was amazed by this analysis. “So Heminge is saying her rewrite, plus all the subtractions and additions, made something good enough to keep King Christian IV awake during the bacchanal? That’s brilliant, professor.”
Professor Rowe smiled, basking in the praise in spite of all his troubles. “And when he wrote he ‘pry’d it back from J’s,’ I would think he meant he took the manuscript she had loaned him back from Jaggards, the bounder doing the typesetting and the printing for the First Folio, who usually would have trashed the rough copies. And then he must have sent it back to your Anne.”
“That’s a wonderful read on the line, professor,” said Stephen, truly impressed.
“You flatter me, dear boy. I would love to take a close look at that scroll, by the way.”
“I think it will be really interesting to see whatever was underneath the patches that Anne pasted on to it. But we thought we should wait until it was in the hands of experts before trying anything.”
“Very wise. The conservationists will tell you which way to go with that,” said Rowe.
“This has been very enlightening, professor, and you’ve been very generous with your time. But there is just one area of questioning I promised Margaret that I would ask you about. I hope you don’t mind or think me too impertinent for doing so.”
“Nonsense. Fire away, dear boy,” said Rowe, secretly steeling himself for the next turn in the conversation.
“Sir, looking back now, I realize that the photocopies I sent you included sections where the secretary hand being shown was a virtual match with a rather famous swatch of secretary hand well-known to paleographic scholars—”
“You mean the famous Hand D from the play Sir Thomas More?” interrupted Rowe.
“Yes, sir,” said Stephen, unable to suppress a smile at the old don’s expertise. “That’s the one. It’s really all over the copy of the Ditchley entertainment we have.”
“Yes, I did recognize it. Actually, it almost gave me another heart attack. In fact, I’m quite convinced you really have a treasure trove for Miss Hamilton, you know. Even though I did at first seem quite dismissive of them—I think I told your gel they were only ‘family papers’—I was quite wrong, now that I’ve thought about it. And the Ditchley entertainment does make sense for the young Shakespeare to have a hand in, if he was indeed Hand D. It was performed in September 1592, and Sir Henry had probably had all sorts of people working on it since the spring. After all, this was going to be his best chance to really state his case for loving Anne Vavasour to Queen Elizabeth. Anne was the very same wench the monarch had locked up in the Tower a dozen years before. And Elizabeth would not have forgotten that: since she had to remain celibate, she bloody well didn’t want her maids bonking in the hallways, and that’s exactly what Mistress Vavasour did with Oxford—and the poor gel was only sixteen or seventeen, I believe.”
“Margaret’s fear, professor, was that anyone who might have recognized Hand D could well have a motive for robbery, and perhaps you’ve heard that many believe Margaret’s father’s death—Vicar Hamilton—could have been foul play, whether planned or by accident.”
Professor Rowe chuckled and slowly shook his head before saying, “Well, that’s not my game, dear boy. I’m no saint, but I’m not that sort of criminal either. Quite frankly, even though Vicar Hamilton must have been ‘old,’ he was probably a lot younger than me. So I don’t think I could be a credible suspect for doing him in, if you’ll pardon the expression—no disrespect intended.”
“No, professor, I can see that. But I just had to ask, you understand. You were probably one of the few people who might have recognized Hand D.”
“I’ll take that as flattery, Stephen. Rest assured, I would never have harmed a vicar—not when I’m so close to going to meet my maker. The thing is, your treasure trove has been quite a blow to me, and I was in denial when I first spoke to you and Miss Hamilton. You know, my whole career has been a rigorous defense of the ‘Stratford man’ as the author of Shakespeare’s works and I have very publicly ridiculed the proponents of the Earl of Oxford as a candidate author, or Sir Francis Bacon, or Queen Elizabeth or even the Tooth Fairy. I’ve said the works are all by the ‘Stratford Man’ and only he. I’ve said it in print, on podiums, and even on television—said it so often I can’t take it all back. And yet now, it’s clear to me that while Shakespeare was the magisterial maker of all the plays, he had quite a lot of collaborators. So in many ways, your collection has been my undoing, professionally. Actually, I still am reeling from that and, in fact, I have not yet figured out how to deal with that at this stage in my life. Quite devastating actually. But I’m not your robber and I’m not the vicar’s murderer.”
But
Rowe left unsaid just how astonished he was to have been the robber and murderer’s accomplice. And if events continued to unfold according to Soames’s new plans, Stephen and Margaret, this attractive young couple, would also become his victims. And that simply could not happen.
“No, sir. Sorry I asked. I can see it wouldn’t possibly be you.”
Stephen said his goodbyes and promised to keep Professor Rowe informed as he and Margaret moved forward to value the collection. As he started down the driveway, a cold chill went down his spine as he realized what must have been the truth: the villain must be Soames. He was the only other person he had shown some of the papers to. And the only other person who might possibly have understood whose handwriting was shown—although he didn’t think Soames had studied paleography that closely in school, so that’s a mystery.
But Margaret was seeing Soames tonight. He must warn her immediately, he thought. Thank god the BBC gave her one of those new alphanumeric message pagers so she could be reached at a moment’s notice, in case some sort of catastrophic story broke. Now he’d just have to drive to one of the pubs in Horton-cum-Studley, call her office, and have them get word to her. Thank god there was always someone there at the BBC, answering the phones.
She could be walking into a deadly trap, for god’s sake.
It’s a bloody business, thought Soames. But thank god I have found a way out of my mess—again. It’s a shame, although it can’t be helped.
Soames was not the sort of bleeding heart to be upset by any qualms about his intent to kill Margaret that very night, after checking out a fancy restaurant for his future use. For her nightcap, just before he was to allegedly drop her off at King’s Cross for the train, Soames was planning to add the contents of the small vial in his right-hand side pocket. That should give them just enough time to pay the bill and stagger her back into the passenger seat of his car for her last ride home. His plan was then to divert her over to her flat—since by then she surely wouldn’t feel up to traveling anywhere by train. He would then call Stephen and explain that she had taken ill and that he had now just left her in a bit of a heap at her flat. Knowing Stephen, that would set him off racing into London to the rescue. And when he arrived at Margaret’s flat, Soames would complete his plan to compose the couple into their murder-suicide tableau. Margaret would seem to have been killed by hotheaded Stephen who was blindingly outraged at the sale of her papers to Soames that night for a supposed £100,000. And Soames would have the supposedly signed bill of sale. Then Stephen would be consumed by remorse and decide to join her in the afterworld himself.
It was all such a tragedy, thought Soames, and a truly Shakespearean Romeo and Juliet one at that, appropriately enough.
Margaret had quite different expectations as she started to travel across London from her flat to join Soames briefly at his mews house before going off to some restaurant he seemed to be excited about. Afterward—if it should be early enough—he’d be dropping her off at King’s Cross for a late train home. She certainly wouldn’t be the only one to have lingered for a Saturday night dinner in London before escaping home to the country for the rest of the weekend. And if for some reason it went later, she could simply go back to her flat and go up to join Stephen Sunday morning.
She hailed a taxi, stepping out of it just at the side entrance of Harrods, just around the corner from Soames. True to form, the headlines on the signs for the Evening Standard outside the entrance to the tube station had nothing to do with the cataclysm in Bosnia and everything to do with Princess Di. Soames lived very nearby in a dollhouse mews house behind Ovington Square, just fifty yards away from the chic shops along the Brompton Road. It had the impossible luxury of providing its own inside parking space for Soames in what used to be the stables underneath an entire floor of luxury living space upstairs. She rang the brass-ringed doorbell and was buzzed in to the entry hall beside the stairs.
“Come on up,” bellowed Soames from above.
“Coming,” she replied, ascending the black and white checked painted stairs. “This is quite the place you have here,” she said noting the stained-glass landing window halfway up.
“Yes. Hello, Margaret. Lovely to see you again,” said Soames, kissing her lightly on the cheek in the continental style. “I snapped it up about four years ago from an aged aristocrat who had it as his pied-à-terre. He was selling all his books—and this house—to try to make the taxes on the family seat up north. I think he actually succeeded, only to have his heirs get rid of all that as well a year or two later.”
“How sad.”
“That was the fate of most of our landed gentry, of course—but only a very few of them hung on as long as that dear old boy. It would have been better, I suppose, for him to keep this place and let English Heritage take the stately home, but he was a traditionalist, for sure. Since then, I’ve had fun fixing it up, and lots of help from the Knightsbridge decorating crowd, who gave me quite good discounts as long as they could photograph it all and bring the occasional client over for convincing.”
“Yes, it does look like a page from Country Life or even
Hello! magazine.”
“Funny you should say that. Both of those have called, but we just haven’t worked out a date for a photo shoot yet.” He laughed. “Would you like a drink?”
“No, I’ll just wait for the restaurant, if that’s all right.”
“Yes, fine. I think you’ll like it—it’s a new one of Sir Terence Conran’s group. Mandy and I are quite the regulars at Bibendum around the corner here, but I haven’t been to this new one myself yet. It just opened.”
“I thought Conran was a designer. I mean, he has a big store around the corner from the BBC on Tottenham Court Road.”
“Designer, architect, and restaurateur, as it turns out—a veritable Renaissance man. Although he doesn’t call them restaurants. He prefers ‘gastrodomes,’ as the French say.”
“Palaces of fine foods?” asked Margaret, suddenly opening up the fluent French part of her head for this conversation.
“Yes, that’s it. So at Bibendum, besides the restaurant, they have a bakery, flower mart, and cooking shop with two hundred-pound stew pots and so on. He calls all that a ‘gastrodome’—some kind of temple for the foodies, I suppose,” said Soames. “I think he means to educate us British on fine foods.”
“Good luck,” said Margaret, chuckling.
“Well, let’s go see this new one – it’s called Pont de la Tour and it’s down by Tower Bridge in an old renovated riverside warehouse. Conran, the architect, did the renovation as well. I thought it might be a fun setting for our chat—and I have to check it out anyway to see if I should take some of my posher clients there.”
“That’s a hard lot you have there,” said Margaret, kidding him.
“Just let me finish up getting ready, and we’ll be off. I thought I’d drive us over and then I can drop you off for your train. They advertise their valet parking service, so let’s put them through their paces,” said Soames as he turned and walked down the hall. “Sit down for a moment. I’ll just be a minute.”
Margaret surveyed the picture-perfect surroundings. Behind the sofa, a library table, with two brass lamps fashioned from statuettes of Wellington and Nelson, framed the fireplace and hunting scene above the mantel. On the table were a short stack of coffee table books and an oversize leather portfolio, lying flat. Without thinking, Margaret reached down and lifted up a corner flap of the portfolio, revealing a small stack of manuscripts within.
Good lord, she thought, staring wide-eyed down at the old writing. They are just like the ones at home. She backed away from the table, much surprised, with the back of her hand instinctively now up across her mouth as if to stifle some spontaneous gasp of surprise. Hold on, now, she continued thinking to herself. You know, he is a manuscript and book dealer, for Christ’s sake. I mean, that’s why we’re going out tonight. Of course, he’d have things like that lying around. That’s what he trades in al
l day, you idiot.
In spite of the attempt at reassurance, she felt suddenly quite off her guard and sat down quickly to compose herself before Soames came back. She succeeded in that, to a degree, and he reappeared quite shortly and said jauntily, “Off we go. We just go down the stairs again and then through the back into the garage. We should be at the restaurant in about fifteen or twenty minutes, as long as we stay clear of the main roads.”
True to plan, Soames kept his Jaguar clear of the Brompton Road and started threading his way along the squares and back roads until they came out onto the Embankment by the Thames. Then it was over Waterloo Bridge to the South Bank and into a warren of dark commercial streets that were totally devoid of any traffic, whether pedestrian or cars. Margaret thought that it was suddenly getting all a bit creepy.
“Old Conran is the development pioneer in this part of town,” said Soames, explaining the unlikely setting they found themselves going through. “I don’t think he would have much luck with these old streets full of livery garages and warehouses, but he might just attract the more adventurous expense-account people over here to the river’s edge. And those are just the sort of people looking for the next new thing.”
“Yes, rather like you,” teased Margaret.
“Oh yes. You’re on to me now, Margaret.” Well, he thought, no—she isn’t on to me at all now, is she?
