The Fatal Fashione: An Elizabeth I Mystery (Elizabeth I Mysteries)

by Karen Harper

  Jenks came to the door, barring her way before she could see inside. “Pamela,” he said, “I’m sorry, but …” His voice trailed off, and he gaped at her. “Ursala?”

  All Meg got out was, “It’s Pamela must have stayed here instead—”

  “Ursala!” Jenks cried, and hugged the woman hard.

  He might not have recognized Pamela drowned, Meg thought, but he sure knew Ursala alive. The last thing Meg saw before she headed for the palace was the look of relief on his face, shining through the pain.

  “’S blood and bones!” Elizabeth shouted, losing her battle with her composure as she banged the chair into the table so hard it shuddered. “Thomas Gresham, I want you to tell me how your ring got in that starch bath in Hannah’s loft! And just leave Anne, Marie, Badger, and even Sally out of this for now.” She still felt a bit guilty for sneaking into his house last night, but she intended to ferret out his own guilt at any cost.

  “The ring was probably Hannah’s,” he admitted. He cleared his throat. “That is, years ago I gave it to Gretta as a pledge of my love, and it provided a way she could buy things on credit if I was back here in London. Hannah took it from her the last time she visited her sister—when I was not there. I just thank God she did not also pilfer my and Gretta’s infant daughter that day.”

  “Did she intend to pilfer Marie or her affections lately?” Elizabeth asked. She did not believe that of Hannah, since she had evidently not answered Marie’s impassioned letters—unless she was just trying to get the girl to come to her or long for her more. Absence was indeed known to make the heart grow fonder.

  “She dared not, Your Grace. Neither Anne nor I would have allowed it.”

  Which could have been a motive for murder, she thought, but she didn’t say so. His countenance had gone from ruddy to ashen, and she didn’t want him fainting at her feet. “Sit, Thomas,” she said, and sat herself, though Cecil stayed standing. “Did Hannah use that ring that same way, to try to buy goods in Antwerp or here?” she pursued when he was settled. “It seems she was careless handling money.”

  “She threatened to use it to gain credit. I gave her money instead, and she promised to give the ring back.”

  “But, as far as you know, she kept it?”

  He nodded.

  “Ah, more truth slides out, as slippery as starch. Thomas, did you kill Hannah von Hoven to stop her from besmirching your good name financially or from blackmailing you or your family?”

  “No, Your Grace! I swear it!” he cried, leaning forward over the table instead of sitting back as she would expect a guilty man to do. He looked so appalled that she wanted desperately to believe him, but she stiffened her backbone.

  “Cecil, I heard the same song in this very chamber from Meg just yesterday,” she said, without looking at him.

  “What does Sally’s mother have to do with this?” Thomas asked. “If I were you, I’d sooner question that friend of Hannah’s who tried to make it sound as if my daughter were guilty, the one who said Marie kept staring up at the starch house window.”

  The queen almost revealed to him all Marie had told of her visit to the starch house, but she decided to keep her cards closer to her chest right now. “You see, it is possible that Hannah’s killer climbed out that window and in again, perhaps in a fit of conscience to tenderly arrange her body,” she told him. “I can envision you wanting to do that in honor of her ties and resemblance to her dead sister, your mistress, but I do not believe with that bad leg you could climb in or out a loft window.”

  He stared at her, gasping like a fish out of water.

  “And that leg of yours is the only reason right now, Sir Thomas Gresham,” she plunged on, her voice becoming more strident as he tried to interrupt her, “that you are yet walking at liberty without having your movements and motives questioned by Chief Constable Nigel Whitcomb!”

  “But I—you must know, Your Grace, that I would never—”

  “I know you would never cheat me at finances, my lord, but am learning things about you day by day that I would never have believed a week ago. You may sit there and write out for me exactly where you were at what time the entire day that Hannah died—the day you were riding about the town to find Marie—and a complete reckoning of what words passed between the two of you the day she came asking for money at Gresham House.”

  With a quick knock, Clifford opened the door. She had told him they were not to be disturbed unless important news came from Jenks and Meg or Ned—or the northern shires were going up in flames.

  “Some information has come, Your Majesty,” Clifford intoned.

  She rose and stepped out into the hallway; the big yeoman shut the door behind her. Meg stood there, disheveled and wringing her hands, looking as dreadful as the day she’d found Hannah’s body.

  “Well?” Elizabeth said.

  “Because Hugh Dauntsey was still in Hannah’s loft, Jenks and I went direct to the laundry. There we found one of the twins drowned in a vat. We thought it was Ursala, but it was Pamel—”

  “Drowned, too? Dead?”

  Meg nodded wildly.

  “Is Jenks still there?”

  “Yes, and there’s water on the floor and some of my cuckoo-pint herbs, just like—”

  “Write out directions for me to the laundry, then go find Ned, and both of you meet us at Ursala’s as soon as possible,” the queen interrupted. “You heard where to look for him, where he might be, and if you come across Celia without him, just avoid her. Meg, now!” she cried, and pushed her away.

  “Clifford,” she went on, “you will go with me to the laundry, while my lord Cecil stays here with Thomas Gresham. I must change my garments and summon Lady Radcliffe. I hardly want to draw attention to myself in these pearls and brocades.”

  “Thank God you’re here!” Jenks blurted the moment Elizabeth and her two companions stepped through the door of the laundry. It was, the queen saw, too dark in here with the window shutters closed. The air was damp and heavy with death. They’d laid the body out on the worktable with a white cloth over the face. On a stool at Pamela’s head sat an older man, evidently the dead woman’s husband, with his hands gripped as if in prayer. Ursala was seated on another stool, with Jenks standing behind her, at Pamela’s feet, one of which Ursala kept hold of as if she could comfort the corpse.

  When the queen swept back the hood of her cloak, everyone rose, looking stunned and overwrought. “Stay where you are,” she told them as she approached the body.

  The tabletop was wet; how much this murder reminded her of Hannah’s. She had no doubt it was the same killer, but felt furious she was no closer to knowing who that was.

  “Ursala and …” the queen said with a nod at the man.

  “Peter Browne,” Jenks said, “Pamela’s husband.”

  “Ursala and Peter, I greatly regret this dreadful turn of events. Both Ursala and Pamela have been of help to me, and I will see she is properly buried.”

  Ursala looked dazed, but Peter seemed to come to life as he squinted up at Clifford. Perhaps, the queen thought, he hadn’t seen so large a man before. “Thankee, Yer Majesty,” he said only.

  “I didn’t let anyone pick up the coins I dropped on the floor yet,” Jenks put in. His eyes were bloodshot; he looked as if he’d been through a battle.

  “All right,” she said. “Now if Peter and Ursala would just leave me here for a few minutes to see to things … Jenks, perhaps you can continue to sit with them in their chambers.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty, right at the back of the building here. Peter?” he said, and helped the man up, then Ursala. “Oh, Melly, Melly, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed into her hands as Jenks escorted them out and closed the door. Though their voices were muted, Elizabeth could hear Jenks talking quietly to them. Her brawny guard had come a long way from just serving her with shield and sword, she thought, then forced herself to concentrate, for she must not take long. She would send Clifford almost immediately for the constable, who, she had n
o doubt, would again send for Nigel Whitcomb.

  “Clifford, open at least one of those pairs of shutters,” she said, and gently lifted the cloth from the corpse’s face. When more light shot into the room, Elizabeth gasped. The dead woman’s lips were horribly red and chapped. Perhaps her mouth had been scraped against the wooden vat in which she had been thrust to die.

  The queen examined the vat, then studied the wet floor Meg had mentioned. Yes, scattered coins and several cuckoo-pint roots that had bounced into corners. “Rosie,” she said, “scan the rest of the floor to see how many of those round bulbs you see.”

  “And pick them up?”

  “No. They are a link to the other murder,” she said, almost to herself. “Look,” she said, pointing at the table next to the body. “Perhaps Pamela was setting the table for her breakfast, for there’s a pewter plate, spoon, and cup. And what’s this strange substance on the plate?” she asked, bending closer to study a small amount of dark, gritty powder with a consistency somewhere between soil and dust. “Rosie, ask Ursala to step back in here.”

  Elizabeth sniffed at it. Vaguely familiar. Then she recalled Anne Gresham’s description of the imported chocolata cakes: little ones, round, brown, dry as dust and likely to break into dust, too, and bitter as can be without sugar.

  “Ursala,” the queen said, when Rosie brought her out, “is this dark dust something for breakfast or that you use to clean clothes here?”

  The young woman peered closer. “Nothing dark cleans clothes. Never seen the likes. If it was here before, I didn’t see it.” She sounded as if she were in a barrel; her eyelids were swollen. To have lost her good friend Hannah and now her identical twin—which brought up other concerns the queen would have to consider. Had the murderer meant to kill Pamela or Ursala? Was he striking at female servants who worked for the queen? If so, was Dingen van der Passe in danger—or Meg?

  “Here, I can taste it and probably tell what it is,” Ursala said, and reached for the stuff.

  “No!” Elizabeth cried, yanking her arm back. “It’s best left alone for now, that’s all. And what might Pamela have drunk in the morning?” the queen inquired, picking up and looking closely into the empty pewter cup. Even in this dismal light, she could see the slightest trace of dark liquid rimming the inside bottom of it.

  “Bread and curds and whey,” Ursala said. “At least almost always.”

  Bread, curds, and whey were all light-hued, Elizabeth thought. The remnants of the drink and the spilled powder were dark—so dark.

  She thanked the dazed woman and sent her back to Jenks. She’d like to know if it was chocolata powder or not, but she was taking no chances. It could be anything. Besides, there was cuckoo-pint on the floor, and Pamela’s lips looked scraped raw. Meg had said even the pollen of the plant could be deadly.

  If this was chocolata, who could have sent it here? It was ridiculous that laundresses could afford expensive stuff like that rare, secret Spanish import, let alone that they would know how to obtain some. Nor could households like this afford the sugar the bitter stuff needed. Her belly cramped again. The only people she knew who had access to the new Spanish fashion were, unfortunately, in the Gresham household, and if the drink was spiked with poison cuckoo-pint, several had access to that, including whoever killed Hannah.

  “Clifford,” she said, “open another pair of shutters. Rosie, come here and help me open her mouth with this spoon so we don’t touch her sores. And, Clifford, bar the door to keep out any of her workers who arrive.”

  “Unless,” Rosie put in under her breath, “like poor Hannah, she had agreed to keep them away to meet with the murderer.”

  “Not this time, I think, or Ursala would have known. No, the one who meant her harm just walked in through an unlocked door or managed to talk his way in for—or with—something.”

  Reminded of the dark dust again, not touching the powder, she brushed about half of it into her handkerchief and knotted it, then tied it to the cord of her pomander. Reluctantly she turned to her terrible task.

  Shuddering, Rosie held the spoon, and with it they pried open the quickly stiffening jaw muscles to peer inside Pamela’s mouth. “Could it be, Your Grace, that someone forced something hot into her mouth to punish her for telling on him or her?”

  “Telling what?”

  “Maybe, if the killer thought she was Ursala, for telling that she’d seen Marie Gresham or Anne Gresham near the site of the first murder. I don’t know. I don’t know about any of this. Ugh.”

  Everything seemed to circle back to the Greshams, Elizabeth thought. Though the light was still not good, she immediately noted two things about Pamela’s death. One, like Hannah, she had swallowed or inhaled water, dark-looking water, too, maybe some of the chocolata. Two, though she was no doubt drowned, there had been an attempt to finish her off another way first. Not with strangulation this time, she would wager, but by poisoning, for the insides of Pamela’s cheeks and tongue were as raw and red as a bloody, uncooked beefsteak.

  Elizabeth rushed over to look again at the fatal vat of liquid. “Someone fetch a candle or two,” she ordered as she stared into the darkish water where Pamela had been found. She didn’t appear to be bleeding, so that wasn’t blood in the water. Could it be chocolata? Cuckoo-pint herb didn’t turn water dark like that but made it milky.

  Rosie located a lantern, which Clifford lit with his flint. “Hold the light over the vat.”

  To Elizabeth’s amazement, the water was not tinted at all. It had only appeared so in the wooden tub and dim room. How many times in this investigation had she found dead ends when she thought something might be a solid clue? At least, thank God, no gold signet ring glittered from the depths.

  She told Clifford to fetch Jenks. “We must call in the constable,” she told him. “You may stay to give Ursala support. If the authorities ask whether anyone else has been here, do not lie to them.”

  “Yes, Your Grace. I am grateful you’re letting me stay with her—she’s lost so much.”

  “At least, my man,” she said, squeezing his rock-hard upper arm, “I believe she has found you.”

  “One more thing,” Jenks said. “Peter tells me that a man as big as Clifford—first, he thought it was Clifford—used to be in this area a lot, loitering around the starch house. Wore black, he did, but for a red-and-blue-striped taffeta cap, and he had a Dutch accent.”

  “Dirck van der Passe,” Elizabeth cried as both Rosie and Clifford nodded.

  “Could be,” Jenks said, “’specially since I heard he admitted he was taking walks round here. But if the constable asks, should I say Meg found this body, too?” he asked, still whispering.

  Elizabeth frowned down at the cuckoo-pint herb and recalled again Meg’s warning about how poisonous it could be. “Don’t be afraid for Meg,” she told Jenks, “for I’m sure her time can be accounted for all morning—I’ll vouch for that. What, man? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Her stalwart Jenks managed to appear even more shaken than he had when she first arrived. “She—Meg came running in late and out of breath to go with me this morning,” he said, his voice a mere whisper. “Said she had to check her drying herbs first in the shed. Well, that could be,’cause losing the profit from selling her starch herbs, she’s got to make more money selling something.”

  “Ridiculous!” Elizabeth insisted aloud at the mere thought that Meg could be at all involved in murder, no matter what Constable Whitcomb had claimed. To cloak her thoughts, she added, “I can just pay her a bit more if she’s fretting about supporting Sally, and the girl is making her own wages. Meg is happy for your new-fledged relationship with Ursala,” she insisted as if they’d spoken of Meg’s possible motive for a second murder. “I know she is, especially now that she and Ned are getting on.”

  “Oh, yes, Your Grace, that’s sure,” he said, but suddenly neither of them sounded like they meant it.

  Chapter the Thirteenth

  THE QUEEN DID NOT RETURN
IMMEDIATELY TO THE palace. Instead, after she sent Clifford to fetch the local constable, with Rosie in tow, she hurried to Hannah’s nearby loft to see if Hugh Dauntsey was still there. The downstairs door was ajar, so she and Rosie tiptoed up the steps.

  He wore forget-me-not blue with a matching cape as if he were at court instead of in this sad, haunted place. Rather than sitting at the table, he was perched on the single stool before the large window across the room. Head bent, he perused something on a long piece of parchment, perhaps his final reckoning of Hannah’s earthly goods.

  The queen’s gaze skimmed the loft, which smelled of something fresh and looked well scrubbed. It had been stripped to the bare bones; the worktable, empty braziers, poking rods, wooden ruff forms, and the starch bath that had been Hannah’s coffin were lined up tidily at the top of the stairs, ready to be hauled away.

  Elizabeth held up her hand to Rosie for quiet and studied the big window from afar. She recalled how she had struggled to close it in her nightmare, but the breeze kept blowing into her face. Could that have been a sign she must open this investigation to consider those she did not want to blame, namely the Greshams?

  Dauntsey had the window completely closed, and it didn’t loom as large as it had when it was open. Yet the loft itself seemed to have grown in size and import since she’d seen it.

  As Elizabeth climbed the last several stairs that brought her into view, Dauntsey looked over, started, and leaped off his stool.

  “This place is not open for bus—Your Majesty? Here?” he cried and, rolling up his documents, strode quickly toward them.

  “Do you think I need a coach or mounted entourage to go about my city?” she asked him as he bowed. “I was called to the scene of a tragedy near here, since,” she said, watching him closely and drawing out her words, “a whitster was murdered this morn in somewhat the same way poor Hannah was dispatched in this very place—in this very tub.” She walked over to knock her fist against the wood, glanced again into his concerned face, and went to look closer at the window.