by Amy Myers
‘That’s how it looks to you, constable?’
He gave a sidelong look to see if Inspector Harvey was listening. He wasn’t, so Constable Peters whispered, ‘No. Another murder so soon after Mr Harcourt’s seems too much of a coincidence. There was a witness, though.’
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Mrs Harcourt. She wasn’t on good terms with Mrs Fortescue. She found the body. While having breakfast at her parlour window, she saw Mrs Fortescue arrive about a quarter past seven and decided to go across and have a word with her, as she was still convinced that Mrs Fortescue had stolen that manuscript from her. She delayed doing so for about twenty minutes as in the meantime she had noted a smartly dressed gentleman here in the bookstore whom she assumed to be either Mr Splendour himself or a customer. By the time she had finished breakfast there was no sign of him, so she came across the road and found just what you see here, Mr Wasp.’
Two constables were taking the body away now, and I looked with sadness at the way Mrs Fortescue’s life had ended. She hadn’t been an attractive lady, but she must have had her own hopes and dreams that perhaps could have been realised. Now, they never would be. To be widowed and then cast off so brutally by Mr Harcourt must have been very hard for her.
‘Why did she come early to work?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Eight o’clock would be more normal.’
‘Mr Splendour said she liked nosing around,’ the constable said, ‘and of course she hadn’t worked there long, so perhaps she was eager to make a good impression.’
‘Or she might have been looking for something — such as the Seven Deadly Sins manuscript,’ I said. It wasn’t a charitable thought to express, but charity doesn’t always explain the truth of things.
‘And that would connect her death to Mr Harcourt’s.’ The constable looked impressed. ‘Plenty of smart gentlemen would fit that theory. All of the Ordinaries, for example.’
‘And the Swell Mob,’ I pointed out. ‘Or Flint.’
It was hard for me to mention his name, conscious as I was that he could well be outside in the crowds now. I thought of Mr Harcourt, I thought of Mrs Fortescue, and I thought of Cockalorum. Three deaths that might have a common source in Flint. I couldn’t answer for Mr Harcourt, but the other two deaths were needless; only obstacles in Flint’s path to be swept aside.
At that moment, Mrs Harcourt swept in, her mourning black making her face look sallow and bitter. ‘I trust the poor woman has now been removed. Is Mr Splendour under arrest?’
‘No one is yet, ma’am,’ Constable Peters said politely.
She looked astonished. ‘He should be.’
‘Why would that be, ma’am?’ I asked.
I was accorded a look of disdain. ‘I see no reason to be interrogated by a chimney sweep,’ she informed the constable.
‘Very well. I’ll ask you, ma’am. Why would that be?’ Constable Peters asked. ‘I’m told you saw the probable murderer.’
‘Yes. It’s quite obvious what happened. That woman stole a valuable manuscript from me, as is recorded in your records. Mr Splendour lured her into working for him, killed that woman and purloined my property.’
‘Was Mr Splendour the man you saw in here?’
‘Certainly. Who else could it have been?’
‘You once thought it might have been a customer,’ the constable pointed out.
‘Rubbish. I’m quite sure it was Mr Splendour. Where is the Tarlton play? Either she or Mr Splendour had it. I trust you are looking for it as a matter of urgency.’
‘Not yet, ma’am,’ the constable answered blandly. ‘Even if she were the thief, the late Mrs Fortescue is unlikely to have brought a stolen manuscript to her place of work and Mr Splendour is unlikely to have killed her in his own bookstore.’
‘Really, constable. Even if Mr Splendour did not commit the murder himself, he could have hired some criminal to murder Mrs Fortescue just as she did herself when she wished to kill my husband. She hired that fellow Phineas Snook to carry out the murder.’
Seeing this flight of fancy had floored Constable Peters, I tried a question of my own. ‘Was your husband excited that tragic evening, ma’am, because he thought Mr Shakespeare had a hand in writing this play?’
Mrs Harcourt, taken unawares by this unexpected turn, made a credible attempt at looking amazed at this very idea, while Constable Peters looked most impressed.
‘How,’ she managed to say, ‘could I possibly answer that? A most foolish question. The manuscript had only just arrived when he sent me the confirming telegram. I advise you to keep to sweeping chimneys, Mr Wasp.’
*
‘Maria?’ Clara was horrified at hearing the news. ‘Well I never did.’
The Saturday luncheon rush was on but the news brought her to a standstill. ‘Poor woman. Poor foolish woman.’
‘Why foolish, Clara?’
‘To believe that old goat Harcourt loved her. Easy to do, Tom. Inside ourselves we remain as comely and enchanting as we were when young and I expect you feel the same. But to others, the outside has worn harshly.’
‘Not you, Clara. True beauty is of the soul and that shines through you.’
I saw a tear in her eye as she replied, ‘Thank you, my dear. Maria was useful to Harcourt, no doubt, when he had no fallen woman at hand or no young lady to seduce, but no more than that. I suppose he had his attractions. He could not have been a successful ageing Don Juan without them. I knew Maria from her youth, Tom. She was a stunner, but life did not treat her well. Widowed young with two small children, left a pauper and forced to work. She has done well, but now this. Dead at the hands of some hustler, you believe.’
‘I believe no such thing, Clara.’
I eyed the scones she was removing from the oven and she brought one over to me. ‘You need someone to look after you Tom. You’re half starved.’
For a moment I thought of a life in Clara’s loving arms, but I pushed the thought away.
‘I’ve Ned to think of,’ I said gently. He needed the only home he’d ever known, Hairbrine Court. In any case, how could I, a sweep, live in a place like Dolly’s, with its high class clientele?
‘He’ll meet a girl soon — and he’s already thinking that way,’ she warned me.
I knew that. I’d seen the signs, but it was too early. ‘He’s not thirteen yet.’
Clara sighed and changed the subject. ‘What if Maria were Mr Harcourt’s murderer? She’d reason enough.’
‘She wouldn’t have had the strength, but she might have used Flint.’ I heard that voice again in my mind, and still its owner eluded me.
‘Best find him quickly, Tom. It could be she knew who killed Mr Harcourt. She was murdered because she threatened to tell the coppers.’
‘Or she might have had her own plans for the Tarlton play. I could be wrong. Perhaps it was she who stole it, tried to raise a price on it and dealt with the wrong people. She’d have known about Lairy John.’
Clara shivered. ‘Books. Everything comes back to books. It’s all so refined and scholarly in Paternoster Row, religious booksellers, ancient histories, books of poetry, all looking so learned and readable — yet underneath, there’s something vicious.’
‘Like Lairy John and Flint.’
‘If so, they did a poor job in ridding themselves of both Mr Harcourt and Maria and still no one knows where this dratted manuscript is.’ She frowned. ‘Suppose Slugger did find it in Phineas’ lodgings once he knew the cat was no longer there.’
‘He and Flint would have gone quiet but they haven’t. It seems they’re still looking for it. Ned’s and my home was turned into a pile of rubbish last night. They didn’t take Ned, but they took Cockalorum and drowned him.’
Clara exclaimed. ‘And Phineas so fond of him! They’re louses. No need for that. You’ve got to find them, Tom.’
I knew that. The question was where. That manuscript surely had to be the key. ‘How much do you know about William Shakespeare, Clara?’
She blinked at
my sudden literary turn. ‘I never met him. Before my time.’
I grinned. ‘Pity. He’d have been a good customer.’
‘He would have come to the Castle, Tarlton’s pub.’
‘Who took that over after Tarlton died?’ The thought occurred to me that the Seven Deadly Sins manuscript had been left behind.
‘Can’t say, Tom. I had it from the Ordinaries that there was some skulduggery going on and he had to plead with Sir Francis Walsingham to look after his family, Sir Francis being in charge of the Queen’s Men, the troupe Tarlton and Shakespeare belonged to. Stories, eh? Most of them get lost in time.’
‘Like the carving of the Boy in Panyer Alley,’ I remarked, thinking of Phineas. ‘No one knows who he is.’
Clara was startled. ‘Fancy your mentioning him. There’s an old story that Zechariah — that chairmaker in the Alley — tells about that Boy being an inn sign outside the Castle in the olden days. You ask him.’
I pricked up my ears. This sounded a tasty morsel of information.
‘I will. Ned doesn’t like the Boy, Clara, because it reminds him of his climbing boy days. The strange thing is that Hetty told me Phineas was interested in the Boy, too.’
It was Clara’s turn to look puzzled. ‘I can’t see why that should be. Most folk look at the Boy without thinking much about it. Pity really, all those people in the past, vanishing away and leaving mysteries behind them. Sometime I think old Tarlton himself haunts this place, maybe because he’s afraid I’m not running it as I should. And now we’ve two murders to worry about. There’s evil at work, Tom, and Dolly’s being swept into it.’
‘It’s like one of your scones,’ I told her, accepting another one. ‘We’re the butter in the middle; on the top are the Ordinaries and Flint and the underside is —’
I’d tripped up, but she guessed what I was going to say as she pushed the butter towards me:
‘Jericho and William. Don’t worry, Tom. If you’re going to get to the bottom of this nightmare, you have to think that way. With murder on our premises we’re bound to be under suspicion. Jericho is a strange fellow, but he’s the best broiler of chops in the City, and as for William, well, I don’t see him murdering anyone and he fair dotes on Hetty. As for killing Maria, that’s right off his beat.’
‘Unless someone knew he killed Mr Harcourt, I thought to myself, but hadn’t the heart to voice it.
*
I doffed my hat as Zechariah looked up at me, removing a long nail from his mouth. Oblivious to what was happening in the Row, he was working on an old Windsor chair that looked as if one tap from a hammer might result in its total collapse.
‘You’re doing splendid work, Zechariah,’ I told him.
He nodded graciously. ‘This little beauty comes from a noble household come down in the world. I always say you never know whose bum has been sitting on a chair, so every one of these darlings deserves respect.’
I looked at the broken chair and thought of all the silent histories of the world, of the chairs that had seated kings and emperors, of the beds that had cradled lovers like Abelard and Heloise, of the plates that could tell tales of last meals. And that brought me back to the Boy of Panyer Alley. I’d like to know why Phineas had been so interested in him.
‘I heard you’ve a tale about the Panyer Boy, Zechariah,’ I began.
‘My boy,’ he grumbled.
‘Yours?’ I mistook his meaning.
‘What do you think I sit here for?’ he asked indignantly. ‘I looks after him day in, day out, and no one ever cares who he is.’
‘I do. Tell me who he is, Zechariah.’
‘Why?’ he asked, his tone not rancorous, just curious.
‘Phineas was here on the day he died and they’ve arrested him for the murder at Dolly’s.’
‘He’ll swing for it. Friend of mine,’ he muttered.
‘I don’t believe he’s guilty.’
He thought about this and finally said grudgingly, ‘’Tis a long time ago. A bloke called Tarlton kept an alehouse nearby here, and my pa said the Boy was outside his alehouse.’
This was a start at least. ‘How did it get here then? And what about that verse? It reads, this is still the highest ground and there’s a date on it of 1688. It doesn’t seem that high here.’
He looked at me as though as I was the local peeler come to give him his walking orders. ‘What’s it matter to you, mister? That old alehouse was the Castle, weren’t it, and castles be built on hills. That high enough for you?’
Zechariah turned his attention to his chair again. ‘Put your hand on the wood, mister.’
I obliged, wishing I’d gone more gently with him.
‘Feel it,’ he said. ‘The living wood. Yew and elm it is. Crying out they are for a drink. You wouldn’t starve your old woman of water, why starve the wood?’
I felt the wood myself and then watched his hands as he did the same, lovingly, eyes closed, and I wondered what other stories lay behind them.
*
Mr Chalcot looked delighted to see me as I walked into his store after leaving Zechariah. ‘My dear sir, pray take a coffee with me.’ He was sitting by the counter, hands folded peacefully across his belly. ‘I wished particularly to see you and good fortune has sent you my way.’ He rose from his chair and hurried into the inner sanctum to ask for another coffee.
This was grandeur indeed. I thought about the old Chapter Coffee House on a corner partway along Paternoster Row; that was another place where the notables in the literary world met for refreshment and conversation. Mr Chalcot’s bookstore, despite being so much smaller, seemed to work on the same principle. For all I knew, amongst the gentlemen visiting his establishment there might be another Shakespeare. Fortunately today it was only myself visiting.
‘This is terrible news concerning poor Mrs Fortescue.’ Mr Chalcot shook his head gravely. ‘I knew her through her work for Mr Harcourt, who was most impolite to her on the day of his death and now she too has met her death. Murder at the hands of a scoundrel who sought money, I’m told by Mr Splendour.’
‘We hope the City of London police believe that, sir.’
‘Do you believe it?’
‘I’m a sweep, sir.’
He smiled. ‘With friends in our great Metropolitan police force I understand. Well, Mr Wasp, this is a fine thing. Are we all to be murdered one by one in the name of Richard Tarlton? The seven deadly sins do not expressly include murder, but I am sure the ancient originators of the list would not condone it.’
‘It could be regarded as the result of wrath, sir.’
‘Or greed,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Certainly not sloth. Two murders in ten days could be said to be extreme.’
‘If by the same hand, Mr Chalcot.’
‘Come, come. Can we doubt that? A mere passing scoundrel as is suggested for Mrs Fortescue’s attacker is hardly probable when a manuscript by Richard Tarlton — very probably written with the help of a youthful William Shakespeare — suddenly appears in our midst, and there is likely to be keen competition to acquire it.’
‘Could any of it be proven to be by Mr Shakespeare?’
‘Mr Harcourt must have been reasonably sure of there being some evidence of that, as he had seen the manuscript. I cannot recall Harcourt’s precise words, but he did mention a comic song or two, a turn of phrase, a speech here and there. One can usually detect a change when the rhythm of the poetry alters. All such things are indications. And there is little doubt that Shakespeare not only knew Tarlton but was very fond of him. Mr Manley and I are as one in our conviction that the sheer affection for Tarlton in Shakespeare’s work makes it clear that it’s unlikely their friendship began as late as 1587, only a year before Tarlton’s death. My dear Mr Wasp, consider the “Alas, poor Yorick” speech — full of tenderness.’
Mr Chalcot was so impassioned that I did indeed consider it once again, having heard Mr Manley on the same subject. ‘But, Mr Chalcot —’
‘— Making it highly l
ikely Shakespeare wrote an earlier version of Hamlet and then rewrote it — as he did other plays — years later for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.’
‘But I —’ Again, Mr Chalcot seemed not to have heard me for he swept on enthusiastically, hands folded once again across his belly with a smile of pleasure as he spoke of his beloved Mr Shakespeare. ‘I have many other observations on this subject —’
I seized my opportunity. ‘As does Zechariah the chairmaker.’ I recounted the story of the Boy and the Castle alehouse.
‘Ah, yes,’ he commented happily, ‘the reference to the highest ground in the inscription underneath the Boy might indeed support your story that the monument originally stood outside the Castle inn, castles being built on hills in early times, and yet —’
‘— It seems to me, Mr Chalcot, that there are too many unknowns in our theories,’ I said firmly, liking to keep my feet on solid ground (whether highest or lowest). ‘And,’ I felt bold enough to point out, ‘we’re straying from the fact that Mr Harcourt and now Mrs Fortescue have been murdered, possibly on account of Mr Tarlton’s play.’
‘You are right, my dear sir.’ He looked crestfallen. ‘We must continue to look further. However, we might agree that fanciful theory and scholarship blend well together on occasion? One can be as true or as false as the other.’
‘But the written word cannot be changed,’ I said, my interest at this turn in the conversation growing.
‘Yet was it true in the first place?’ he countered, and we were both well satisfied.
I felt myself quite an antiquarian, but all this did seem a long way from the task before me. Freeing Phineas by finding out who murdered Mr Harcourt and Mrs Fortescue was not going to be greatly advanced by my newfound knowledge. Or was it? It had taught me that there were depths of passion that would make gentlemen stop at nothing — even murder — to gain what they were after: be it money, a script by Richard Tarlton or a girl like Hetty.
